Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “not black.” As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Limbaugh asks the rhetorical question: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?… He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa.… [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.” Media Matters documents this claim being advanced as far back as February 14, when blogger Kenneth Lamb wrote that Obama “is actually Arab-American [and] not legally African-American.” Lamb produced no evidence of his claim, but since then, conservative bloggers and some radio hosts have repeated the claim. In reality, Obama’s father was a African from Kenya, in the black part of Africa, and his mother was a Caucasian American. [Media Matters, 9/22/2008]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, appearing as a guest on Fox News, tells listeners that in a United Nations speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated “talking points” from the stump speeches of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh says that Ahmadinejad “echo[ed] Barack Obama talking points—talking about how America is responsible for all the problems of the world, talking about how American defense spending is—led to the crisis here.” Limbaugh provides no proof of his assertion. Limbaugh says that Democrats “must be pulling their hair out” because Ahmadinejad is “echoing Obama’s talking points.” In his speech to the UN today, Ahmadinejad discussed what he called “Zionist murderers” and to the purported influence of “Zionists” on the “political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US.” [CNN, 9/23/2008; Media Matters, 9/24/2008]

Roger Ailes, a powerful Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988) and the founder and chairman of Fox News (see October 7, 1996), realizes that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to win the upcoming presidential election (see November 4, 2008). In preparation, Ailes begins hiring an array of conservatives to join his network (see November 3, 2003, July 2004, and October 26, 2009), many of whom he intends to groom for the 2012 presidential race. By the time the election is over, Ailes will have hired Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s political guru, and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate. (Ailes is able to woo both Rove and Huckabee away from CNN, which also offers them positions as paid commentators.) Soon, Ailes will hire several more possible Republican contenders, including the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), and former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Ailes fully intends to use Fox News as a platform for launching Republican presidential bids (see May 22, 2011), but his decision to hire Rove, Huckabee, Palin, and the others is also business-driven. A close friend of his will explain: “It would be easy to look at Fox and think it’s conservative because Rupert [Murdoch, the media executive who owns the Fox networks] and Roger are conservative and they program it the way they like. And to a degree, that’s true. But it’s also a business. And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it.… It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like: ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’” Ailes met secretly with Palin in September 2008, and will continue to court her for Fox after the campaign, even loaning her a private jet owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation. CNN will decline to offer her a position, and Ailes, through programming chief Bill Shine, will negotiate a three-year, $3 million deal to have Palin as a regular contributor and a host of prime-time specials. Amid all of this, Ailes does not want Fox News to be seen as an arm of the Republican Party (see December 2002 and October 11, 2009). [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] In 2010, the press will report that Fox News has “exclusive rights” to broadcast and interview four presumed 2012 Republican candidates, Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee, and Santorum (see September 27, 2010).

The conservative “astroturf” advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see Late 2004) holds a conference of conservative political operatives and pundits in a Marriott hotel outside Washington, DC. Right-wing blogger Erick Erickson of RedState.com thanks oil billionaire and AFP co-founder David Koch (see August 30, 2010) from the podium and promises to “unite and fight… the armies of the left!” The rest of the conference is spent planning how to battle the policies that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama might implement if he wins the November election. AFP will be instrumental in the Koch brothers’ battle against Obama administration policies (see August 30, 2010). [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]

Amy Kremer, a former flight attendant who wil go on to found the Atlanta Tea Party and become the chair of the Tea Party Express, writes of Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ), “he needs to tell Nobama [referring to presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL)] to bring his authentic birth certificate to the debate. I am so tired of the spin from his spinmeisters! Johnny Mac… just go straight to the source!” Kremer is referring to questions some have raised about Obama’s supposed lack of a valid birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) and accusations that he is not an American citizen. Authors Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind later write of Kremer’s “birther” beliefs, “Much of this sentiment predates the actual formation of tea parties.” [Politico, 2010; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

A Web graphic accusing presidential candidate Barack Obama of beginning his political career in the home of college professor William Ayers. [Source: Kickin and Screamin (.com)]Republican vice-presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) accuses Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of “palling around with terrorists” who intend to attack American targets. Palin, telling audiences in Colorado and California that it is “time to take the gloves off,” says Obama has ties to the 1960s-era radical group Weather Underground through an acquaintance, University of Illinois at Chicago professor William Ayers. Obama, Palin says, “is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” The Weather Underground was once labeled a domestic terrorist group by the FBI. Ayers served on a board with Obama and held a fundraiser for Obama’s Senate run in 1995. Obama has condemned Ayers’s connections with the Weather Underground, and most media organizations have discounted any ties between the two men. The Weather Underground has been defunct for decades. Palin says she is not attempting to “pick a fight” with Obama, but is telling campaign audiences about Obama and Ayers because “it was there in the New York Times… and they are hardly ever wrong.” Ayers, she says, “was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and US Capitol.’ Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes.… This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us.” Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan condemns Palin’s remarks, and cites a list of media outlets that have debunked the so-called Obama-Ayers connection. “Governor Palin’s comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swiftboat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills,” Sevugan writes. He also notes that the New York Times is one of the media outlets that debunked the connection, stating, “In fact, the very newspaper story Governor Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Senator Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less ‘pals,’ and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was eight.” The Obama campaign calls the attempt by the McCain-Palin campaign to link Obama to Ayers part of a campaign of “dishonest, dishonorable assaults against Barack Obama.” [Christian Science Monitor, 10/5/2008]

Chris Baker. [Source: The Vigil]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker calls Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama a “little b_tch” for reacting to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama was “palling around” with accused domestic terrorist William Ayers. Baker says: “[T]his little b_tch needs to stand up for himself. Sorry, I can’t stand this. You want to be the president of the United States, and you won’t even stand up to a smoking-hot chick from Alaska? How is he gonna stand up to the world’s terrorists?… I mean, this—this guy—this guy is—he’s a—he’s a wimp is what he is.… This wuss-bag needs to stand up for himself and answer the questions about his relationship with Bill Ayers and other terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.” Baker cites two articles from the Associated Press and New York Times, but fails to note that both articles debunk Palin’s claim that Obama had anything but a peripheral connection to Ayers. And Baker fails to reveal that the Obama campaign had responded two days before to the Palin assertions. [Media Matters, 10/7/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker promotes an Internet video that features a Harlem preacher calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s mother “trash.” Baker discusses the video, by the Reverend James David Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church, on his radio show, and posts the video on his Web site. Baker says of the video: “Oh God, you have to—you have to see this. This guy—I mean, this guy just goes off. And he’s not really wrong, either. That’s the best part, at least, you know—at least, in my hate-filled opinion.” Manning contrasts Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose daughter Bristol is carrying a child out of wedlock. Manning says: “The difference between Obama’s mama and Bristol Palin is that Obama’s mama was trash. I mean, she was dirt. She was a bag of trash sitting on the sidewalk waiting there in Honolulu on one of those streets for the garbage truck to come by and pick her up and take her to the dump.… [M]y mama told me back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the only kind of white women that would take up with a black man back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a trashy white woman. The only kind of white woman that would take up with a black man in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a sloozy, was a floozy, was a lowlife, snail-eating, white woman. That’s the kind of woman that Obama’s mama was.… Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that piece of trash called Obama’s mama. Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that trash that hatched Obama. Yeah.” Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, was a white American, and his father was a black African. [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]

Jerome Corsi leaving Kenya, with members of his entourage and Kenyan escorts. [Source: Los Angeles Times]Jerome Corsi, the author of a bestselling book that smears US presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), is detained in Kenya after engaging in a book tour in Nairobi, the nation’s capital. Authorities say Corsi is attempting to promote his book without a work permit, a breach of Kenyan law. [London Times, 10/8/2008] “His papers were not in order,” says Immigration Ministry spokesman Elias Njeru. “He came in with a tourist visa but had to do business. So his papers were on the wrong side of the law.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/8/2008] Corsi also intended to present a check for $1,000 to George Obama, a half-brother of the candidate who was found living in poverty in a Nairobi slum a few weeks ago. The London Times calls the attempted donation “a stunt to suggest that [Obama] was not taking care of his Kenyan-based relative.” One Kenyan governmental source suggests that Corsi is being held in part for rumors he has spread that Obama is partly responsible for the wave of violence that engulfed the country after the 2007 presidential elections; The Times writes that few in Kenya take Corsi’s allegations seriously. According to promotional literature Corsi and his associates intended to distribute, “Dr. Corsi will also expose details of deep secret ties between US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectoral groups in Kenya and subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Senator Obama win the American presidency.” Obama, whose father is Kenyan, is “hugely popular across Africa,” The Times reports, and many Africans wonder “why American right-wingers would wish him ill.” [London Times, 10/8/2008]Attempts to Blame Obama for Detention - Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that while in Kenyan detention, Corsi calls in on an American conservative radio talk show, Quinn & Rose, and, after claiming he was in detention because the Kenyans lost his travel papers, suggests that Obama had somethng to do with his detention. “Call Barack’s office and—call Barack’s office and ask him why I’m being detained,” Corsi says. “Tell you what: I think it’s pretty dangerous—it’s pretty dangerous to write a critical book of Barack Obama. I wouldn’t advise anybody do it.” (Corsi has repeatedly suggested that the Obama campaign had tried to censor him—see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008.) [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]Leaves Kenya without Incident - Hours later, Corsi later leaves Kenya; it is not clear whether his departure is voluntary. Kenyan police say Corsi leaves of his own volition, but a Corsi spokesman accuses the Kenyan authorities of treating Corsi “like a criminal.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/8/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, conservative radio hosts echo the claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate proving his American citizenship, a claim long since debunked (Obama long ago posted a copy on his Web site—see June 13, 2008—and document experts and the Hawaii Department of Health will confirm its validity—see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Rick Roberts tells his audience that Obama’s birth certificate “hasn’t… been produced” and that no one in the Obama campaign has ever provided one for public scrutiny. Chris Baker says there “has never been a real birth certificate presented” by Obama. Michael Savage, taking the story one step further, says that the birth certificate “that was produced is a forgery.” Savage also claims that no one in Hawaii, Obama’s birth state, can find the original certificate: It “does not exist, they can’t find it in the Hawaii government. It’s never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery.… I will never work for a man who has a birth certificate nobody can find. In other words, if you vote for Obama, you’re insane.” Savage goes on to claim that Obama is actually a Kenyan citizen, like his father, another claim long since disproven (see August 1, 2008 and After), and makes an equally illegitimate claim that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa, or radical Islamist school (see January 22-24, 2008), under the name “Barry Soetoro”; Savage even claims that Obama legally changed his name to “Barry Mohammed Soetoro” in Indonesia. No such name change has ever been documented. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008] Weeks later, Savage will assert, without proof, that Obama will visit Hawaii to address the issue of the birth certificate and cloak the trip by ostensibly visiting his gravely ill grandmother (see November 10, 2008).

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that Jerome Corsi, author of a book widely debunked as an attempt to defame presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After) and after leaving Kenya where he had been briefly detained by authorities for peddling his book without a work permit (see October 8, 2008), tells conservative radio host Lee Rodgers that he is a victim of journalistic suppression. “I think the story here is really the suppression of the press,” he says. “I hate to think of what the First Amendment is going to mean. If you write a negative book or criticize Obama, I think you’re now going to have to risk being thrown in jail or killed.” Rodgers agrees, “Yeah, well, that’s the mentality of these people.” Corsi also claims that he has been targeted by the Obama campaign: “I’m telling you, this is scary. I have heard from Obama supporters telling me: one way or another, boy, when we’re in office, we’re going to shut you down.” Corsi has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of censorship by the Obama campaign (see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008). Corsi also tells Rodgers that he has “[d]isproved every point” that the Obama campaign made in a “40-page rebuttal” to his book. In reality, Corsi responded to the Obama campaign’s rebuttal by issuing a list of 11 corrections for the next printing, most of which corrected lies identified by the Obama campaign or outside sources. [Media Matters, 10/10/2008]

Washington State resident Steven Marquis files a petition in Washington’s Superior Court demanding that Secretary of State Sam Reed either prove that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is a “natural born” citizen or remove him from the presidential ballot. Marquis says that granting his petition would “prevent the wholesale disenfranchisement of voters” who might otherwise choose a candidate who is a valid citizen. “At this point, Mr. Obama has not allowed independent or official access to his birth records nor supporting hospital records,” Marquis writes in his petition, and accuses the Hawaii Health Department of “violat[ing] federal law by ignoring formal Freedom of Information requests for the same.” Obama has long since posted an authentic copy of his birth certificate on the Internet (see June 13, 2008), and this has repeatedly been verified as valid (see June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Marquis references another lawsuit challenging Obama’s citizenship, filed by lawyer Philip Berg and awaiting a hearing in a federal district court (see August 21-24, 2008). Marquis explains the timing of his petition—just before the presidential elections—as caused by Obama’s “delay and subsequent non-response to reasonable request for valid certificates.” He also cites the Washington secretary of state’s office’s refusal to certify Obama’s birth certificate as he has previously requested, writing, “To date, in this regard, Secretary of State Sam Reed has not carried out that fundamental duty.” Washington Superior Court Judge John Erlick will throw out Marquis’s petition, saying Reed has no such authority to force Obama to prove his citizenship, and cites Marquis’s failure to name Obama as a party to his complaint. [WorldNetDaily, 10/16/2008; Mid-Columbia Tri-City Herald, 10/28/2008; WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008]

Bill Cunningham. [Source: WBAP 820 AM]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, host of a popular Cincinnati call-in show, implies that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the “Antichrist” and tells his audience that Obama’s popularity may be a sign of the Apocalypse. Cunningham, noting that reports show Democrats have registered 666,000 new voters in Ohio, says: “And around Ohio, the number [of newly registered voters] is 666,000. Six-six-six. The mark of the beast. The great majority, of course, are registered by ACORN. The mark of the beast. And who is the beast? Who gave ACORN $800,000 as part of this criminal conspiracy? Who was the lawyer for ACORN? Who conducted ACORN seminars to tell ACORN employees and others how to cheat the system? Barack Hussein Obama. I may declare him to be the beast. Six-six-six. It could be the end of all days.” Cunningham also claims that radical Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, who he erroneously characterizes as Obama’s “buddy,” calls Obama “the messiah… the son of God.” 666 is the Biblical number of “The Beast,” or the Antichrist, whose coming heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of days. ACORN is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a community activist organization that works to register poor voters. Obama once represented ACORN in a lawsuit. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008]

Alaskan Independence Party logo. [Source: Alaskan Independence Party]Reporters and authors Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert compile an investigative report for Salon that documents the large, if shadowy, network of far-right militia support that Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) enjoys. Palin is running for vice president with presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ). Two of her most powerful supporters are Mark Chryson, the former head of the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), and Steve Stoll, a far-right activist and member of the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) known in his home region of the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve.” Both Chryson and Stoll are large financial contributors to Palin’s various political campaigns, and, as Blumenthal and Neiwert write, “they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during, and after her victory,” referring to her successful campaigns for mayor of Wasilla (see Mid and Late 1996) and, later, Alaska’s governor. Chryson’s AIP fought to eliminate taxes, support what it called “traditional family” values, remove all restraints from gun ownership, and perhaps most controversially, force Alaska to secede from the United States. Still a proud AIP member, Chryson tells the reporters that he still has “enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement,” but assures the rest of the nation, “We want to go our separate ways, but we are not going to kill you.” Under Chryson’s leadership and on into the present, the AIP works to connect with like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South of the US. Chryson is from Wasilla, Palin’s hometown, and during the 1990s his support was critical in making Palin the mayor of Wasilla and later the governor of Alaska. He and Stoll played an equally critical role in shaping her political agenda after her victories. Governor Palin often worked closely with Chryson as he and the AIP worked to successfully advance a wave of anti-tax, pro-gun legislative initiatives, and helped Chryson put through a change in Alaska’s Constitution to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. As both mayor and governor, Palin and Chryson worked together to extract revenge against local officials they disliked. Palin often took Chryson and Stoll’s advice on hiring government officials. “Every time I showed up [in Wasilla] her door was open,” Chryson says. “And that policy continued when she became governor.” Originally Saw Palin as Too Accomodating with Democrats - Chryson first met Palin in the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government Excess. He met her through SAGE founder Tammy McGraw, who was Palin’s birth coach. Palin was a leader in a pro-sales tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla, which helped her win a seat on the Wasilla City Council in 1992. Chryson liked her, but considered her too willing to work with council Democrats to be of use to him. Chryson was then jockeying to become head of the AIP, a powerful political party that in 1990 had elected Wally Hickel (AIP-AK) as governor; Palin wanted to be mayor of Wasilla. Chryson and Palin quickly determined that they could help one another. Chryson became leader of the AIP in 1997, and saw Palin as a chance for the AIP to take its message more mainstream. He helped quiet the more racist members and platform planks of the AIP, and reached out to Alaska’s growing Christian-right movement by emphasizing AIP’s commitment to “traditional family” values and its opposition to gay rights. Chryson even succeeded in softening the AIP’s insistence on secession. Chryson is an expert at crafting his political message to appeal to disparate groups, and succeeded in forging alliances with white supremacists, far-right theocrats, neo-Confederates, and more moderate right-wing groups that do not advocate open racism, rebellion, Christian theocracy, or violence. In 1995, Palin’s husband Todd joined the AIP, further cementing Chryson’s increasing support of Palin. Palin Secured AIP Support for Mayorality - With Stoll, Chryson helped gain Palin the mayorship of Wasilla in the 1996 election, comforted by Palin’s steady move rightward as she continued her tenure on the city council. Palin’s opponent in that election, Republican John Stein, will later say of Chryson and Stoll: “She got support from these guys. I think smart politicians never utter those kind of radical things, but they let other people do it for them. I never recall Sarah saying she supported the militia or taking a public stand like that. But these guys were definitely behind Sarah, thinking she was the more conservative choice.… They worked behind the scenes. I think they had a lot of influence in terms of helping with the back-scatter negative campaigning.” Chryson helped Palin craft a successful campaign based on personal attacks on her opponents, both Stein and her Democratic opponent. Palin characterized Stein as a closet Jew and a sexist, both mischaracterizations, and falsely challenged the legal status of his marriage. Wasilla resident Phil Munger, a close friend of Stein’s, recalls, “I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn’t seen until then.” Chryson helped Palin thwart a local gun-control measure (see June 1997). Chryson and Palin attempted to name Stoll to an empty seat on the Wasilla City Council, but were thwarted by another councilman, Nick Carney, who considered Stoll too “violent” to be a successful council member. Implementing AIP Agenda as Governor - Chryson recalls helping Governor Palin slash property taxes and block a measure that would have taken money for public programs from the Permanent Fund Dividend, or the oil and gas fund that doles out annual payments to citizens of Alaska. Palin endorsed Chryson’s unsuccessful initiative to move the state legislature from Juneau to Wasilla. She was successful at helping Chryson get pro-militia and gun-rights language into the Alaska Constitution. In 2006, Chryson helped Palin bring Hickel on board as the co-chairman of her gubernatorial campaign; Hickel’s presence meant the implicit endorsement of the AIP for Palin’s candidacy. Hickel later said of his support, “I made her governor.” Hickel now supports Palin’s bid for the vice-presidency, spurred in part by her explicit endorsement of the AIP agenda (see March 2008). Infiltrating the Mainstream - Chryson has long advocated that AIP members “infiltrate” both Republican and Democratic parties, and points to Palin as a model of successful infiltration. “There’s a lot of talk of her moving up,” AIP vice chairman Dexter Clark says of Palin. “She was a member [of the AIP] when she was mayor of a small town, that was a nonpartisan job. But to get along and to go along she switched to the Republican Party.… She is pretty well sympathetic because of her membership.” It is possible, Blumenthal and Neiwert speculate, that Clark saw Palin as so closely aligned with Chryson and the AIP that he wrongly assumed she was an official member. Chryson understands that as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin has no intention of espousing secessionist or racist views. Indeed, he hopes that her inauguration will represent the beginning of a new and deeper infiltration. “I’ve had my issues but she’s still staying true to her core values,” Chryson says. “Sarah’s friends don’t all agree with her, but do they respect her? Do they respect her ideology and her values? Definitely.” [Salon, 10/10/2008] In the days after this article appears, the McCain-Palin campaign will confirm that Sarah Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982, and claim that she was never a member of AIP. AIP chairperson Lynette Clark will say that her husband Dexter’s recollection of Palin as an official AIP member is mistaken, and reiterate that she and AIP support Palin fully in her bid for the vice presidency. [ABC News, 9/1/2008; Alaskan Independence Party, 9/3/2008]

Samuel Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. ‘Joe the Plumber.’ [Source: Orlando Sun-Sentinel]Republican presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ)‘s running mate, Sarah Palin (R-AK), accuses Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) of advocating socialism as an economic plan. “[N]ow is no time to experiment with socialism,” Palin says, referring to Obama’s proposal to offer tax credits to those paying no income taxes. Palin echoes comments made by Pennsylvania resident Samuel Wurzelbacher, known to the media as “Joe the Plumber,” in which he said Obama’s tax plan sounded like socialism to him. Palin tells a crowd in New Mexico: “Senator Obama said he wants to quote ‘spread the wealth.’ What that means is he wants government to take your money and dole it out however a politician sees fit.” Referring to a man in the crowd holding up a sign identifying himself as “Ed the Dairy Man,” Palin adds, “But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairy Man, I believe that they think that it sounds more like socialism.” She continues: “Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism. To me, our opponent plans sounds more like big government, which is the problem. Bigger government is not the solution.” She calls Obama’s tax plan “a government giveaway,” and says the plan will raise taxes on those who already pay taxes: “He claims that he’ll cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, but the problem is, more than 40 percent of Americans pay no income taxes at all,” she says. “Since he can’t reduce taxes on those who pay zero, he wants the government to send them a check that’s called a tax credit. And where is he gonna get the money for all those checks that he will cut? By raising taxes on America’s hard-working families and our small businesses.” Later, at an airport in Colorado Springs, Palin tells a reporter, “There are socialist principles to [Obama’s tax plans], yes.” She continues, “Taking more from a small business or small business owners or from a hard-working families and then redistributing that money according to a politician’s priorities—there are hints of socialism in there and that’s why I don’t fault or discredit Joe the Plumber for bringing that up, asking if that is socialism.” Palin says that the $700 billion White House bailout of failing banks and other financial institutions is not socialism: “I believe that there are those measures that had to be taken by Congress to shore up not only the housing market but the credit markets, also to make sure that that’s not frozen, so that our small businesses have opportunities to borrow and that was the purpose, of course, of that part of the bailout and the shoring of the banks.” [ABC News, 10/20/2008]

Presidential candidate John McCain takes the microphone from a woman who says opponent Barack Obama is ‘an Arab.’ [Source: Associated Press / Truthdig (.com)]Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican candidate for president, draws boos and catcalls from his own supporters when he defends opponent Barack Obama (D-IL) from charges that he is an Arab. Obama has been accused of being Arabic, Muslim, and not a US citizen by opponents (see October 1, 2007, April 18, 2008, July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, and October 8-10, 2008). At a town hall in Minnesota, McCain takes questions from selected members of the audience; in recent days, spurred by accusations from McCain and his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), that Obama is a close ally of “terrorist” William Ayers (see October 4-5, 2008), McCain rallies have been marked by screams and cries of “Terrorist!” and “Traitor!” hurled against Obama. According to McClatchy reporters, at a rally in New Mexico earlier in the week, McCain “visibly winced” when he heard one supporter call Obama a “terrorist,” but said nothing in response. In today’s town hall, supporters pressure McCain to attack Obama even more fiercely. Instead, when one supporter tells McCain he fears the prospect of raising his young son in a nation led by Obama, McCain replies, “I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.” The comment draws boos and groans from the crowd. McCain continues: “If you want a fight, we will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments.… I don’t mean that has to reduce your ferocity, I just mean to say you have to be respectful.” Later in the town hall, an elderly woman tells McCain: “I don’t trust Obama.… He’s an Arab.” McCain shakes his head during her comment, then takes the microphone from her and says: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Obama and his supporters have acknowledged that the rhetoric in the final weeks of the campaign is likely to get even more heated. He tells crowds in Ohio, “We know what’s coming, we know what they’re going to do.” In recent rallies, McCain has stepped back from the more heated rhetoric, refusing to talk about Ayers and instead calling Obama a “Chicago politician.” Palin, however, has continued the attacks on Obama via the Ayers association. Recent McCain-Palin television ads asking, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” have been taken by some as insinuating that Obama may be a Muslim. Obama has been a practicing Christian for decades (see January 6-11, 2008). Former Governor William Milliken (R-MI) has said, “I’m disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign.” [McClatchy, 10/10/2008; Los Angeles Times, 10/11/2008] The next day, Obama thanks McCain. “I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric yesterday, and I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other,” he tells a crowd in Philadelphia. Referencing McCain’s military service, he says McCain “has served this country with honor and he deserves our thanks for that.” He then returns to his standard campaign broadsides against McCain’s economic proposals. [Wall Street Journal, 10/11/2008]

David Neiwert. [Source: Quotd (.com)]Author and reporter David Neiwert appears on CNN’s Newshour program to discuss a recent article he co-wrote for Salon that revealed details of Governor Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) support from far-right militia and secessionist groups in Alaska (see October 10, 2008). Palin is now running on the Republican presidential ticket with John McCain (R-AZ). CNN interviewer Rick Sanchez is particularly interested in discussing Palin’s connections with the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), a political third party in Alaska that advocates an array of far-right initiatives, including the secession of Alaska from the United States. Sanchez notes that between 1995 and 2002 Palin’s husband Todd was a member of the AIP, and according to Neiwert’s article Sarah Palin has had her political career shaped by AIP leaders such as Mark Chryson. Neiwert explains the AIP to Sanchez, saying, “Well, what we have known about the AIP for some time is that they were basically the Alaskan contingent and the ‘Patriot Movement,’ which, in the lower 48 states, manifested itself as people who form militias, tax protesters, constitutionalists, and that sort of thing.” Neiwert refuses to directly compare the AIP to the ideology of the far-right militia groups that spawned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), as Sanchez asks, but says that McVeigh and the AIP “basically come from the same sort of ideological background.” Neiwert does not consider the AIP a particularly violent group, and calls it “a pretty benign organization,” but affirms that most AIP members “despise” the US government. He notes that Chryson told him and co-author Max Blumenthal that Todd Palin was never particularly active in the AIP, saying, “Basically, he signed up, joined the party, and then was not active at all.” He also confirms that Sarah Palin was most likely not a member of the AIP, but, as Sanchez says, “[S]he does have some ties to either members or its causes.” Palin rose to power in Wasilla, Alaska, through the auspices of the AIP, Neiwert says, both as a city council member and later as mayor (see Mid and Late 1996). Sanchez runs a video clip of Palin’s videotaped address to the AIP convention in 2008 (see March 2008). Sanchez confirms that Palin attended the convention personally in 2006, because, Neiwert says, “she was campaigning there for governor. And the AIP did not have a gubernatorial candidate that year. And its members essentially endorsed Sarah as their party’s standard-bearer.” Neiwert then explains Chryson’s program of “infiltrating” AIP members into positions of power in both Republican and Democratic parties, and notes that the Salon article quoted Chryson as being particularly proud of having “infiltrated” Palin into such a high level of influence. “[T]he AIP has specifically had a program of infiltration aimed at getting members and their sort of camp followers promoting within the other political parties,” he says. “And, obviously, the Republican Party is a lot closer in Alaska to the AIP than the Democratic Party is.” The McCain campaign sends a message to CNN during the Neiwert interview from campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb that reads: “CNN is furthering a smear with this report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning Senator [Barack] Obama’s religion. No serious news organization has tried to make this connection. And it is unfortunate that CNN would be the first.” Sanchez notes that CNN has been trying for hours to get the McCain-Palin campaign to prepare a response to the Neiwert interview, which begins after 3:00 p.m. EST. Neiwert notes that the AIP is not a religious organization, saying: “Some of the members are very definitely fundamentalist Christians, but the AIP, itself, is not involved in religious issues, except to the extent that it is involved with the Constitution Party of the United States. This is the larger national umbrella that they organize under. And the Constitution Party is definitely a theocratic party.” [CNN, 10/14/2008] After the interview, Neiwert posts on a liberal blog, Crooks & Liars, that like CNN, he attempted to elicit a response or rejoinder from the McCain-Palin campaign and received no response until the broadcast. Neiwert notes that his interview was not in any way a “smear,” because “[a] smear by definition is untrue. However, everything in our story is fully documented. We’ve even posted the relevant documents here so readers can judge the accuracy of the story for themselves.” He also notes that the interview said nothing about Palin’s faith or religious beliefs, but was strictly “about her conduct as a public official.” He concludes, “If Team McCain wants to convince anyone this is merely a ‘smear,’ they’re going to have to demonstrate some falsity or distortion first.” Neiwert says that some Palin defenders respond with the accusation that he is attempting to find Palin “guilt[y] by association.” He counters: “But ‘guilt by association,’ by definition, involves an entirely irrelevant association.… Palin’s associations with the ‘Patriot’ right, however, are entirely relevant, because they reflect directly on her conduct as a public official and her judgment. They also, I should add, reflect on a deeper level the kind of right-wing populism she’s been indulging in recent weeks.” [Crooks and Liars, 10/14/2008] In the days after this interview appears, the McCain-Palin campaign will confirm that Sarah Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982, and claim that she was never a member of AIP. AIP chairperson Lynette Clark will later say that AIP party officials’ recollection of Palin as an official AIP member is mistaken, and will reiterate that she and AIP support Palin fully in her bid for the vice presidency. [ABC News, 9/1/2008; Alaskan Independence Party, 9/3/2008]

The press reports that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) recently submitted a voter registration form filed under the name “Mickey Mouse” to the Orange County, Florida, board of elections. Fox News co-anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer, hosting the “straight news” program America’s Newsroom, mock ACORN for filing the form. Under Florida law, ACORN is required to submit all voter registration forms even if it suspects they are bogus: failure to submit a voter registration form is punishable by a $1,000 fine. Kelly reports the form submission, and Hemmer reports that the form was rejected, saying, “ACORN says they are required to turn in every application that is filled out, even if it says Mickey Mouse.” Kelly then says: “I love that, they’ve got the obligation to submit it no matter what it says. Mickey Mouse, Jive Turkey, which we saw yesterday. How are we to know?” ACORN official Brian Kettenring tells a Tampa Bay Times reporter, “We must turn in every voter registration card by Florida law, even Mickey Mouse.” The liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters cites the pertinent Florida statute: “A third-party voter registration organization that collects voter registration applications serves as a fiduciary to the applicant, ensuring that any voter registration application entrusted to the third-party voter registration organization, irrespective of party affiliation, race, ethnicity, or gender shall be promptly delivered to the division or the supervisor of elections.” If a third-party voter registration organization such as ACORN fails to submit any voter registration form, it is liable for a “fine in the amount of $1,000 for any application not submitted if the third-party registration organization or person, entity, or agency acting on its behalf acted willfully.” Kettenring says he is not sure the “Mickey Mouse” voter registration form came through ACORN, though it bore a stamp indicating that it was collected by someone affiliated with the organization. ACORN has come under fire for problems with some of the forms submitted by its employees, including 35 voter registration forms submitted in Pinellas County, Florida, that the Pinellas Board of Elections considered questionable. Recent forms submitted by the organization in Las Vegas listed the names of the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. Republicans are claiming that the “Mickey Mouse” submission and others are part of a nationwide conspiracy by ACORN to subvert the electoral process; Republican National Committee (RNC) counsel Sean Cairncross says that ACORN is a “quasicriminal organization” engaged in “a widespread and systemic effort… to undermine the election process.” Kettenring says that a few of ACORN’s paid voter registrars are attempting to get paid by submitting forms that are clearly not legitimate. ACORN says it fires canvassers who forge applications, citing a recent firing in Broward County of one worker who turned in applications with similar handwriting. The organization alerted the county’s election supervisor to the problem. ACORN pays $8/hour for canvassers to register votes, and does not pay bonuses for volume or a specific number of signatures. The organization says officials call each name on the forms to confirm their legitimacy, but under Florida law must submit even problematic forms. [Tampa Bay Times, 10/14/2008; Media Matters, 10/14/2008] In March 2008, Fox reporters misquoted a Washington state official regarding allegations of ACORN-driven voter fraud (see May 2, 2008). Seven days before the Fox News report, officials raided the Nevada offices of ACORN in a fruitless attempt to find evidence of voters being fraudulently registered (see October 7, 2008). Four days after the report, independent factcheckers will find allegations of voter registration fraud leveled against ACORN to be entirely baseless (see October 18, 2008). Five days after the report, a Fox News guest will accuse ACORN of causing the subprime mortgage crisis (see October 19, 2008). And in 2009, Fox News host Glenn Beck will accuse ACORN and President Obama of working together to create a “slave state” within the US (see July 23, 2009).

Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey lambasts CNN for what he calls an attempted “smear” against Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK). Rainey is referring to a segment recently aired on CNN (see October 14, 2008) that interviewed author and columnist David Neiwert, who recently co-wrote an article about Palin’s connections to the far-right, secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP—see October 10, 2008). Palin has already demanded that the McCain-Palin campaign issue a statement repudiating the CNN segment, a decision the campaign did not acquiesce to (see October 15, 2008); it is unclear whether Rainey had any knowledge of Palin’s demand, though McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb sent a message to CNN calling the segment “a smear” that was aired during the segment itself. Rainey writes that the Neiwert interview was little more than “a reheated, overwrought, and misleading story that seemed designed to yoke Sarah Palin and her husband to the most extreme secessionists in Alaska.” He acknowledges that Palin’s husband Todd Palin once belonged to the AIP, and writes, “[H]is wife, the governor and now Republican vice presidential nominee, has been friendly with some of its members.” (The article by Neiwert and co-author Max Blumenthal goes into significant detail about how AIP leaders such as Mark Chryson have steered Palin’s rise to power from her days as a Wasilla city council member.) Rainey accurately notes that neither Neiwert, Blumenthal, nor CNN have shown that Palin has echoed the AIP’s central platform call for Alaska’s secession from the United States. He calls Alaskan politics “eccentric,” and says that in Alaska, the AIP “is not so far out on the fringe. An AIP member won the governorship in 1990. And party members have been in the thick of the state’s public life for decades. Members run the gamut from states-rights enthusiasts to radical secessionists who have advocated extreme measures to free Alaska from the United States.” Rainey criticizes CNN interviewer Rick Sanchez for “front-loading” his segment with “outrageous pronouncements from AIP founder Joe Vogler, now deceased,” including Voger’s famous pronoucement: “The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won’t be buried under their damn flag.” Rainey draws a comparison to Democratic candidate Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s “old pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.,” then writes, “[T]o my knowledge, no direct connection between Vogler and Gov. Palin has been reported.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/15/2008] In a rejoinder published on the liberal news blog Crooks and Liars, Neiwert notes that in the CNN interview, he was careful not to associate Palin directly with far-right radicals such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), as Sanchez attempted to do, and notes, “Part of covering and writing about the Patriot movement involved listening and watching carefully to distinguish them, because to some extent, you had to give the mainstream conservatives the benefit of the doubt when it came to their actual intent in getting involved with these groups.” However, Neiwert goes on to say, the connections between Palin and the AIP are quite strong and well detailed. He also notes that AIP vice chairman Dexter Clark said flatly in 2007 that Palin “was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town (see Mid and Late 1996)—that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along—she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80 percent approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.” He also notes that Clark later disavowed his claim of Palin’s membership in the AIP. However, Neiwert writes, “it’s clear that Clark and many others within the AIP viewed Palin as ‘one of ours.’ And as we have demonstrated, they did so with good cause.” He concludes that it is a “cold reality that Palin has a real history of empowering these extremists, and pandering to their conspiratorial beliefs, from her position of public office. And the question is whether that would continue from a position of real power in the White House.” [Crooks and Liars, 10/15/2008]

McCain-Palin campaign strategist Steve Schmidt. [Source: Los Angeles Times]Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), the Republican candidate for vice president with presidential contender John McCain (R-AZ), learns of a recent CNN report about her ties with the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP—see October 14, 2008) and the Salon.com article that sparked the report (see October 10, 2008). Palin is on a campaign jet en route to New Hampshire when she sees part of the segment, along with a graphic on the bottom of the screen touting “The Palins and the Fringe.” The segment discusses her husband Todd Palin’s former membership in the AIP, and her own videotaped message to the 2008 AIP convention (see March 2008). During a rally this afternoon, someone on the rope line shouts a question about the AIP. Palin determines that the campaign is not working hard enough to downplay her connections to the AIP, and quickly sends an email to Steve Schmidt, the campaign’s chief strategist, and to campaign manager Rick Davis and senior adviser Nicolle Wallace. The email, titled simply “Todd,” reads: “Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that’s cropped up all day today—two reporters, a protestor’s sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd’s involvement in an anti-American political party. It’s bull, and I don’t want to have to keep reacting to it.… Pls have statement given on this so it’s put to bed.” Palin is worried in part because her vice-presidential debate with Democratic contender Joseph Biden (D-DE) is coming up in hours, and she has no desire to delve into the Palins’ associations with the AIP during it. Five minutes after Palin sends the email, she receives a reply from Schmidt, saying: “Ignore it. He [Todd Palin] was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america.” Palin is unsatisfied, sending another email to the three original recipients and cc’ing it to five other campaign staffers, including her personal assistant. CBS News will later report: “Palin’s insertion of the five additional staffers in the email chain was an apparent attempt to rally her own troops in the face of a decision from the commanding general with which she disagreed. Her inclusion of her personal assistant was particularly telling about her quest for affirmation and support in numbers, since the young staffer was not in a position to have any input on campaign strategy.” Palin writes: “That’s not part of their platform and he was only a ‘member’ bc independent alaskans too often check that ‘Alaska Independent’ box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan. He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed.” Palin is misrepresenting the nature of Alaskan voter registration documents: they contain the full name of the Alaskan Independence Party, not “Alaska independent,” as she seems to assert. Schmidt sees Palin’s second email as an attempt to mislead the campaign and sends a longer response about the AIP, which says: “Secession. It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country[.] We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this.” CBS will call Schmidt’s pushback against Palin’s insistence on a correction “particularly blunt in that it implicitly questioned her truthfulness. Furthermore, his unwillingness to budge an inch on the matter was a remarkable assertion of his power to pull rank over the candidate herself.” Palin does not respond to the email. [CBS News, 7/1/2009] The McCain-Palin campaign will issue a brief statement denying that Palin was ever a registered member of the AIP. “Governor Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982,” campaign spokesman Brian Rogers will say. “As you know, if she changed her registration, there would have been some record of it. There isn’t.” AIP chairperson Lynette Clark will confirm Rogers’s statement. [ABC News, 9/1/2008; Alaskan Independence Party, 9/3/2008]

Sarah Obama, standing with her step-grandson Barack Obama in a 2009 photograph. [Source: Shooting from the Lip (.com)]Bishop Ron McRae of the Anabaptist Church of North America calls Sarah Onyango Obama, presidential candidate Barack Obama’s elderly step-grandmother. McRae, in Pennsylvania, speaks to Mrs. Obama in Kenya over a garbled and troubled telephone connection; Mrs. Obama uses at least one translator, Vitalis Akech Ogombe (a cousin of Obama’s and the grandson of Sarah Obama), because she speaks Luo and Swahili. (Apparently some, if not all, of the conversation is translated between English, Swahili, Luo, then back to Swahili, and then into English.) Additionally, the conversation takes place during a riotous celebration, and on the Kenyan side is being heard through a speakerphone. McRae set the conversation up through a contact, Kweli Shuhubia, a Kenyan Christian evangelist McRae knows as “Brother Tom,” and who, in an exchange of emails, apparently demanded money and goods for setting up the “operation,” as he and McRae call it. The telephone conversation lasts 14 minutes, and McRae apparently does not inform the Kenyans that they are being recorded. The resulting audiotape creates a firestorm of controversy over President Obama’s supposed birth in Kenya, because it appears that Mrs. Obama says she saw him born in Kenya. McRae quickly makes an edited portion of the audiotape available on the Internet. It says in part: McRae: - “Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to visit Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?” Ogombe: - “She says yes she was. She was present when Obama was born.” The edited version does not contain the next portion: McRae: - “Okay, when I come in December, I would like to go by the place, the hospital where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?” Ogombe: - “No. Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.” McRae: - “Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.” Ogombe: - “He was born in America, not in Mombasa.” McRae: - “Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was gonna go by and see where he was born.” Ogombe: - “Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father, his father was also learning there. The state of Hawaii.” McRae: - “I thought she said she was present. Was she able to see him being born in Hawaii?” Translator: - “No, no.… She was not… she was here in Kenya. Obama was born in America.… Because the grandmother was back in Kenya and Obama was born in America, where he is from, where his father was learning, learning in America, the United States.” Instead of posting the entire audiotape, McRae will continue to insist that Sarah Obama confirmed Obama’s Kenyan birth. McRae submits an affidavit that states in part: “Though some few younger relatives, including Mr. Ogombe (one of the translators), have obviously been versed to counter such facts with the common purported information from the American news media that Obama was born in Hawaii, Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama was very adamant that her grandson, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, was born in Kenya, and that she was present and witnessed his birth in Kenya, not the United States. When Mr. Ogombe attempted to counter Sarah Obama’s clear responses to the question, verifying the birth of Senator Obama in Kenya, I asked Mr. Ogombe how she could be present at Barack Obama’s birth if the senator was born in Hawaii, but Ogombe would not answer the question, instead he repeatedly tried to insert that, ‘No, no, no. He was born in the United States!’” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, notes that a March 2007 story in the Chicago Tribune featured a quote from reporter Tim Jones, who spoke with Sarah Obama and quoted her as saying that she received a letter announcing Obama’s birth and she “was so happy to have a grandchild in the US.” PolitiFact concludes that the audiotape as presented was “tightly… edited” to give a false impression that Mrs. Obama had seen Barack Obama being born in a Kenyan hospital. [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ; Obama Conspiracy (.org), 3/6/2009; St. Petersburg Times, 4/7/2011] McRae will release his edited audiotape in the last week of October 2008, in an apparent attempt to influence the upcoming presidential election. [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ]Explanation of Hoax - Investigative blogger Greg Doudna, who later obtains a copy of the unedited audiotape and makes it, and a transcript, available on the Internet, explains McRae’s reasoning behind the hoax. “In this conversation McRae sought to obtain evidence on tape in support of a conspiracy theory circulating in certain right-wing circles in America, namely, that Barack Obama Jr. was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as represented, but actually was secretly born in Kenya. According to this theory, Obama’s mother, then-18-year-old Ann Dunham, waited until about seven or eight months into her pregnancy to take a grueling transcontinental flight halfway across the world to Kenya, there to discover that because of her pregnancy she was not allowed by an airline to get on the plane back to the US, and so was forced to have her baby—the future president of the United States—in a hospital in Kenya. Motivated by a desire to ensure that her child would be regarded as a US citizen with all rights thereof, she or fellow-conspirator family members plotted to have [Obama’s] birth recorded in Hawaii as if it happened in Hawaii, including placing a notice in a Hololulu newspaper of the birth, which was published a few days later (see July 2008). The plot succeeded (so the story goes), and the secret of the true circumstances of Barack Obama Jr.‘s birth in Kenya was closely held by the family, so much so that neither Ann Dunham nor any other family member ever spoke of a trip of Ann Dunham to Kenya in all the years since.” The “conspiracy” would have worked, Doudna writes, had Obama not decided to run for president. “No witness, document, evidence, or testimony has been produced which locates Ann Dunham anywhere outside the United States at any time in her life prior to 1967, when she and young Barack Jr. went to live for several years in Indonesia. Neither the outgoing Bush administration, the Republican Party, the McCain campaign, nor any of Obama’s earlier rivals for the Democratic nomination disclosed any awareness of evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, or in any other way ineligible to be president. Yet the notion is fervently believed, like an urban legend that will not die.” [Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ]Audiotape Used in Lawsuit - The edited audiotape will be presented as “evidence” of Obama’s supposed Kenyan citizenship in a lawsuit (see August 21-24, 2008).

Michele Bachmann. [Source: Think Progress (.org)]House Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) slams the patriotism of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball, Bachmann uses Obama’s disputed ties to former Weather Underground member William Ayers and Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, to attack Obama’s patriotism and character. “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” Bachmann tells host Chris Matthews. “That’s what the American people are concerned about.” Bachmann goes farther, suggesting that anyone with liberal or progressive views is “anti-American.” Matthews, apparently stunned by Bachmann’s remarks, asks how many Congress members she is referring to, and Bachmann replies, “You’ll have to ask them.” Bachmann then calls on the news media to conduct investigations into the “anti-American activities” of Congressional members, perhaps similar to the investigations conducted by former Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s. “What I would say—what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that,” she says. [Think Progress, 10/17/2008]'Misreading' of Her Words - The next day, Bachmann denies ever calling Obama’s views “anti-American.” On a Minneapolis radio talk show, she says: “I feel his views are concerning. I’m calling on the media to investigate them. I’m not saying that his views are anti-American. That was a misreading of what I said. And so I don’t believe that’s my position. I’m calling on the media to take a look at what his views are.” [Think Progress, 10/18/2008]'Chris Matthews Laid a Trap' - On October 21, Bachmann tells the St. Cloud Times that the entire controversy is Matthews’s fault. In Bachmann’s view, she was victimized by a clever and manipulative host. “Chris Matthews laid a trap, and I walked into it,” she says. “Chris Matthews was using the term [anti-American] over and over, and I should not have used it.… This was Chris Matthews. I made a big mistake by going on the show. I never should have.… I just didn’t recognize—I never watched the Chris Matthews show before. I should have before I went on. I didn’t recognize that he would lay a trap the way that he did.” [Think Progress, 10/22/2008]Renewing the Attack - On October 22, Bachmann appears as a guest or caller on several right-wing radio shows, where she continues to launch attacks against Obama’s patriotism and character. On Hugh Hewitt’s show, she says flatly, “Barack Obama’s views are against America.” On Mike Gallagher’s radio show, she asks of Obama’s policy proposals, “Are they for America or will they be against traditional American ideals and values?” She continues: “And I’ll tell you what. Punishing tax rates, redistribution of wealth, socialized medicine, inputting censorship in the form of the un-Fairness Doctrine, and taking away the secret ballot from the worker has nothing to do with traditional American values. That’s why your listeners need to know. Otherwise the United States may be literally changed forever.” She also tells Gallagher that the media scrutiny of her comments is part of a coordinated effort “to get my scalp on a platter.” She explains why the media is “out to get her”: “I touched a nerve, which shows how ultra hyper-sensitive leftists are right now in this country. They know we’re a center-right country and they know Americans would shrink back if they truly come to understand how Obama will radically change this country. I mean they’re so afraid.… [T]hat’s why shows like the Today Show are banding together with Keith Olbermann [another MSNBC talk show host] and Chris Matthews to get my scalp on a platter.” She ends her interview with Gallagher by making a “desperate” plea for campaign contributions. [Think Progress, 10/22/2008]

Andy Martin. [Source: Andy Martin]Hawaiian resident Andy Martin files a writ of mandamus in Hawaii’s Supreme Court to compel Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI) to release a certified copy of presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s “vital statistics record,” apparently asking that Hawaii ignore federal privacy laws and release the “long form” birth certificate on file for Obama (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, and August 21, 2008). His request is denied. [WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008] When his lawsuit is dismissed, Martin responds on a blog for defeated Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in a posting reprinted on the Free Republic and a number of other conservative blogs. Martin expresses his doubt that Obama has just flown to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother, apparently referencing conspiracy theories on right-wing radio that Obama went to Hawaii to “scrub” his birth records (see November 10, 2008). He suggests that it is his lawsuit that caused the Obama campaign “to panic and suspend his presidential campaign to head off Andy’s stories.” (Martin has been posting a number of blog entries about Obama being a “covert Islamist”—see October 1, 2007 and April 18, 2008). He is, he boasts, “on the verge of taking down the Obama campaign,” calling himself “the good sheriff stand[ing] alone against the Obama Gang. Eliot Ness and the Untouchables? The Long Ranger? Pick your own hero. Martin vs. Obama explodes into a Hollywood classic.” Martin writes: “I will do my best to defeat Obama even though I essentially stand alone. I stand tall. All of the protagonists are from Chicago. Despite ridicule and envy from Chicago’s corrupt mainstream media, I have spent over forty years successfully fighting crooked politicians like Barack Obama and his Daley Machine cronies.” He cites “support” from Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity, and his own participation as a blog commenter on FoxNews.com and YouTube. He says he “became the target of a massive liberal assault at the [New York] Times” after one Hannity broadcast: “On direct orders from the Emperor Obama, the New York Times then unleashed its smear machine on me.” He says his “investigative team” defeated the Times’s attempt to “destroy me,” writing: “I am still standing and the Times’ credibility is going into the toilet.… High Noon.… Barack Obama vs. Andy Martin. The drama builds as we move closer and closer to disclosing the dramatic truth about Barack Obama.… Barack Obama is an enemy of the Constitution. He is using tens of millions of dollars in clandestine campaign cash from unknown sources to stage an electoral coup d’etat in our nation. That is why I keep fighting for the truth. Barack Obama has been lying to the American people. And his Big Lie is about to be exposed.” [Andy Martin, 10/21/2008] Shortly after the lawsuit’s dismissal, Martin will abruptly abandon his accusations that Obama is a Muslim, and will begin asserting that Obama is a secret Communist taught by his “father,” a black activist named Frank Marshall Davis (see Before October 27, 2008). In a wide-ranging article about the “birther” controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

General Colin Powell, the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush, endorses Barack Obama (D-IL) for president. In his endorsement speech, Powell criticizes those who try to label Obama as a Muslim. Powell says in part: “I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says [referring to John McCain (R-AZ), Obama’s opponent in the race], but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.” [US News and World Report, 10/20/2008]

John Fund. [Source: Rightsideva]Fox News runs an interview with right-wing journalist and Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund, author of the book Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, in which Fund claims that ACORN was “at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis,” and is planning to “overload the election system, to make it so there’s such chaos at the polls that they can bring a lot of voters there.” He also calls Barack Obama “radical” and suggests that he is working in concert with ACORN on a hidden agenda to expand government and “dramatically change American society,” in ways he does not specify. On the Fox website the video is posted under the headline, “Author of book on voter fraud explains how ACORN’s actions are detrimental to Democracy.” [Fox News, 10/19/2008]

Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn. [Source: OrbitCast]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Rose Tennent, on her nationally syndicated talk show Quinn & Rose, says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “because he doesn’t want to be known as an Uncle Tom anymore. He wants to be black again.” Co-host Jim Quinn says of Powell: “He’s tired of being called an Oreo.… [R]emember, when he was in the Bush administration, he was a white guy.” Tennent responds: “Blacks hated him. They—‘Oh, he doesn’t count. It doesn’t count that you have someone black in the administration. He’s not really black, he’s an Uncle Tom.’” Tennent says that Powell’s endorsement of Obama “is racism.” [Media Matters, 10/20/2008]

Philip J. Berg. [Source: Qui Non Negat, Fatetur (.com)]Attorney Philip J. Berg, whose lawsuit challenging Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s citizenship was thrown out of a Pennsylvania court (see August 21-24, 2008), claims that because Obama never personally responded to his lawsuit, Obama is thusly “admitt[ing]” to the lawsuit’s allegations. Berg charged that Obama was not born in the United States (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, and August 21, 2008), but in Mombasa, Kenya. Berg cites Rule 36 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that unless the accused party provides a written answer or objection to charges within 30 days, the accused legally admits the matter. Obama, through his campaign lawyers, filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit and did not directly answer the charges in it. Therefore, Berg says Obama has legally admitted he is not a natural-born citizen. Berg is asking the court to formally declare Obama’s admission and for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to name someone else as its presidential candidate. To a reporter with the conservative news blog WorldNetDaily, Berg says: “Obama and the DNC ‘admitted,’ by way of failure to timely respond to requests for admissions, all of the numerous specific requests in the federal lawsuit. Obama is ‘not qualified’ to be president and therefore Obama must immediately withdraw his candidacy for president and the DNC shall substitute a qualified candidate.” Obama’s campaign has said that lawsuits such as Berg’s (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), are not actually about Obama’s birth certificate, but instead are “about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen.” Obama’s campaign has issued a number of documents and assertions that prove Obama’s citizenship, as have several non-partisan fact-checking organizations. Berg has offered to drop his lawsuit if Obama will prove his citizenship to Berg’s satisfaction. Berg tells a conservative blogger: “It all comes down to the fact that there’s nothing from the other side. The admissions are there. By not filing the answers or objections, the defense has admitted everything. He admits he was born in Kenya. He admits he was adopted in Indonesia. He admits that the documentation posted online is a phony. And he admits that he is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president of the United States.” [WorldNetDaily, 10/21/2008] Joseph Sandler, a lawyer who filed one of the motions to dismiss on behalf of Obama, says Berg’s contention is erroneous. He goes on to explain why claims like these are never challenged or explained by defending lawyers: “When you file a motion to dismiss, to try to get the case thrown out before any factual inquiry is made, the facts that the plaintiffs put into their complaint are assumed to be true. You have to show that even if the facts were true, they don’t have a case.” [Washington Independent, 7/24/2009]

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that conservative radio host Jim Quinn, of the syndicated show Quinn & Rose, says that the US should go back to a time where only landowners could vote. Quinn says: “Originally, if you didn’t own land, you didn’t vote, and there was a good reason for it: because those without property will always vote away the property of other people unto themselves, and that’s the beginning of the end.… Now—I mean, I can hear the appeal to the masses: ‘It’s not fair, it’s not the American way that you don’t get to vote,’ but let me ask you a question: If I don’t own anything, what kind of a problem do I have with voting for a measure—a tax, a law—that takes somebody else’s property and gives it to me? I have no stake in personal property ownership ‘cause I don’t have any. Now, back in the day, when this was the law of the land, anybody who wanted to vote needed to step up to the plate, achieve, get a stake in America, and then vote.” Quinn equates non-landowners’ right to vote with what he calls “organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses.” [Media Matters, 10/21/2008] A day later, radio host Michael Savage says that public assistance recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008).

A photograph of Ashley Todd, with a backwards ‘B’ scratched into her face. Todd claims an Obama supporter beat her and scratched the letter into her face. [Source: Dan Garcia / Hollywood Grind]Twenty-year-old Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ), tells Pittsburgh police she was attacked, beaten, and robbed by an African-American male who claimed to be a Barack Obama (D-IL) supporter. According to Todd, the man accosted her at a Citizens Bank ATM in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. He was brandishing a knife, Todd claims. Todd gave him $60. When the man saw a bumper sticker on her car supporting McCain, she says, he punched her in the back of the head, knocked her down, and beat her, saying, “You are going to be a Barack supporter.” He then pinned her down and used the knife to scratch a “B” (for Barack) into her right cheek; she attempted to fight back, but he said he was going “to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter” before actually cutting her. He then fled, Todd says. Todd’s left eye is also bruised. The attack happened around 8:50 p.m.; Todd calls the police around 9:30 p.m., after the attack. She initially refuses medical attention. The next day, however, she will receive a full checkup at a local hospital, including an MRI. Todd says she is not a member of the McCain campaign, but went to Washington, DC, in June for training with the College Republicans. She posted pro-McCain and anti-Obama comments on Twitter in the hours preceding the attack, the last one coming just minutes before she alleges she was accosted. She describes her alleged assailant as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes, wearing dark-colored jeans, a black undershirt, and black shoes. She emphasizes that her assailant is an Obama supporter. Within hours of the alleged attack, Todd posts comments on Twitter about it, along with allegations that she was targeted deliberately by members of the local Obama campaign and exhortations to support McCain in the upcoming elections (see October 23-24, 2008). The Hollywood Grind, reporting on the incident, observes: “Despite the information we’ve gathered above, there are three things that make us skeptical. First, Ashley is a hardcore McCain supporter, as evidenced by her Twitter updates… that show her posting Twitter updates right up until the alleged attack, then the last post three hours after the attack. Second, she initially refused medical attention, but finally got it the next morning. Third, the ‘B’ scratched on her face is backwards, making it look like it was done in a mirror.” [Associated Press, 10/23/2008; Hollywood Grind, 10/23/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008] Todd acts suspiciously almost from the moment the police respond to her complaint. She goes to the house of a friend and fellow College Republican, Dan Garcia, a University of Pittsburgh law student. After being told of the alleged attack, Garcia treats her wounds and contacts the police. When an officer arrives at Garcia’s house, Todd becomes belligerent when asked where the attack took place. “I don’t know!” she shouts, using an expletive. “I’m not from here.” Todd, Garcia, and the officer then drive through Bloomfield, the town where Todd alleges the attack occurred, until they arrive at the Citizens Bank on Liberty Avenue. Todd then tells the officer that the Citizens Bank ATM is where she was attacked. She refuses medical attention offered by the officer, and instead leaves with Garcia to go eat at a diner, apparently making some of her Twitter posts during her time at the diner. It is during this time that Garcia takes the photograph of Todd with the scratched “B” on her face. Garcia then persuades her to go to a nearby hospital. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008] The next day, Todd will admit to lying about the incident, and will admit to inflicting the “B” on herself (see October 24, 2008). It is unclear how much of her story as reported in the press comes from Todd, and how much of it is embellished by a McCain campaign operative (see October 23-24, 2008).

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism releases a study that finds that, by and large, the media coverage for Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been more negative than that for his opponent, Democrat Barack Obama. The Center writes: “Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so. But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time.” The study also finds: “Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments. In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted.” The study also notes that coverage for McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, “had an up and down trajectory, moving from quite positive, to very negative, to more mixed. What drove that tone toward a more unfavorable light was probing her public record and her encounters with the press. Little of her trouble came from coverage of her personal traits or family issues. In the end, she also received less than half the coverage of either presidential nominee, though about triple that of her vice presidential counterpart, Joe Biden. The findings suggest that, in the end, Palin’s portrayal in the press was not the major factor hurting McCain. Her coverage, while tilting negative, was far more positive than her running mate’s.” [Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism, 10/22/2008] The progressive media watchdog site Media Matters will call the study “arguabl[y] flaw[ed]” and will note that it does not include conservative talk radio, whose coverage of the presidential campaign has amounted to what the site calls “an all-out effort to foment hate and suspicion of Obama among their listeners, promoting the most baseless and farfetched of smears and advancing falsehoods—including about Obama’s religion and background—that have taken hold among a substantial percentage of the electorate” (see July 9, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, and November 10, 2008). [Media Matters, 11/6/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that Americans who receive public assistance should not be able to vote. “Do you think a person on welfare has the right to vote?” he asks. “I don’t. Why should a person who is on public assistance maintain the right to vote? Tell me why. Where is it written that they should have the right to vote?… I support them, and they should have the same vote I do? That would be like saying an infant has the right to vote or an insane person has the right to vote. Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They’re only gonna vote themselves a raise.” Savage then brings up Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: “So if you get a demagogue like Obama coming along, and he says to the welfare recipient, elect me, and I’ll make sure that we have trickle-up poverty, and the rich—so-called, that is anyone who works for a living—will give you more money, more welfare, of course you’re gonna vote for the demagogue Obama. See, if I was in charge, I’d pass a law which says, OK, you can’t support yourself for whatever reason, you’re on welfare, you lose the right to vote.… You get back on the self-sufficiency, you get the right to vote. Then we’ll have a fair election in America. Otherwise, it’s all over. We have a communist nation either now or in the very near future.” [Media Matters, 10/23/2008] A day before, radio host Jim Quinn said that only landowners should be allowed to vote (see October 21, 2008).

Within hours of Pittsburgh resident Ashley Todd’s claim that she was attacked by a black Barack Obama supporter whom, she says, carved a “B” (for “Barack”) into her face during the attack (see October 22, 2008), conservative blogs and political Web sites begin an outpouring of enraged and supportive posts and articles supporting Todd and lambasting the Obama campaign and the “liberal media” which, they say, will do its best to cover up the alleged attack. Todd uses her Twitter account, and her connections as a member of the College Republicans and a McCain campaign volunteer, to spread the word about her alleged attack. The photograph of her and her wounds, taken by her friend Dan Garcia and given to police and the College Republicans, is quickly posted on the popular conservative news and gossip site Drudge Report, which calls the attack a “mutilation.” The Drudge article takes the controversy to a national level. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008]Bloggers Respond - Conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, writing for the popular blog Instapundit, uses the Drudge article for the basis of his own post (repeating the claim that Todd was “mutilated”), and writes, “This is so serious that I predict it will get almost one-tenth as much national coverage as something some guy may have yelled at a Palin rally once.” He repeats a comment from another blog that says, “But, were it a black woman with an ‘M’ carved in her cheek [presumably for ‘McCain’], we’d be getting 24/7 coverage.” [Glenn Reynolds, 10/23/2008] Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey, writing for another popular blog, Hot Air, calls the attack a “maiming,” though he does not blame the Obama campaign for it, instead writing that “this particular criminal sounds like he’s a couple of bricks short of a load even for that crowd.” Morrissey initially resists the idea that Todd may be perpetuating a hoax, writing, “Not too many young women would scar their faces just to create a political hoax,” but later admits that Todd lied and calls her a “very, very disturbed young woman.” [Ed Morrissey, 10/23/2008] A blogger for College Politico calls the attack “horrifying” and derides bloggers at the liberal Daily Kos for being “unsympathetic,” citing comments that expressed doubts about Todd’s veracity, calling them “deprived” (apparently intending to call them “depraved”) and saying that the Kos bloggers “have absolutely no reason to doubt her.” He goes on to criticize conservative bloggers who also express their doubts about Todd’s story, calls some of the skepticism “idiotic,” and says the fact that the “B” is carved backwards “MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING” (caps in the original). The blogger later posts updates acknowledging that the story is a hoax, and calls Todd “the lowest level of scum.” [College Politico, 10/24/2008; College Politico, 10/24/2008] A blogger calling himself “Patrick” for the conservative Political Byline posts the picture of Todd and writes, “So, this is what they do to people who support McCain.” In his title, he says Todd’s attacker is “One of Barry’s fans, I’m sure,” referring to Senator Obama, and calls Obama the “Marxist Magic Negro.” Like the others, he eventually acknowledges that the story is a hoax. [Political Byline, 10/24/2008]Malkin Expresses Doubts - One conservative blogger who does not immediately leap on the Todd story is Michelle Malkin. When the story breaks, she writes of her suspicions about the “B” being carved so neatly into Todd’s face, and carved backwards, and how she finds Todd’s initial refusal to accept medical treatment questionable. Before Todd admits to the fraud, Malkin writes: “We have enough low-lifes and thugs in the world running loose and causing campaign chaos and fomenting hatred without having to make them up. I’ve been blowing the whistle on the real, left-wing rage not on the front page and in-your-face tactics throughout the election season. Hate crimes hoaxes—by anyone, of any political persuasion, and of any color—diminish us all.” [Michelle Malkin, 10/23/2008]Presidential Campaigns Respond - The McCain campaign issues a statement denouncing the attack as “sick and disgusting”; the Obama campaign issues a statement deploring the attack and demanding that Todd’s assailant be quickly brought to justice. Both McCain and his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), telephone Todd with expressions of concern and support. The Pennsylvania communications director for the McCain campaign, Peter Feldman, quickly spreads the story, along with the photo of Todd, to reporters around the state, along with what reporter Greg Sargent will call “an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established.” Apparently Feldman is the person who first tells reporters that the “B” stands for “Barack.” [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008]Obama Campaign Demands Explanation, Corrections - Todd soon admits that she lied about the attack, and though she claims her memory does not well serve her, says she probably scratched the “B” into her cheek herself (see October 24, 2008). When the national press learns that Todd lied about her attack, the Obama campaign becomes incensed, demanding that the McCain campaign explain why it was pushing a version of the story that was, in Sargent’s words, “far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.” The Obama campaign also pressures some news outlets, including KDKA-TV and WPXI-TV, to rewrite their reports to remove the inflammatory and “racially charged” information concocted by Feldman, including claims that the alleged attacker told Todd he would “teach [her] a lesson” about supporting McCain, and that the “B” stood for “Barack.” There is no evidence of the national McCain campaign becoming involved in promulgating the falsified Todd story. [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008]'Okay Obama Frame-Job. ... I'd Give You a 'B' - After the story is exposed as a fraud, many post irate or sarcastic rejoinders on Twitter, using the hash tag ”#litf08” to ensure their viewing on the College Republican Twitter account, “Life in the Field,” where Todd made many of her Twitter posts. A former blogger for the Senate campaign of Christopher Dodd (D-PA), Matt Browner-Hamlin, asks: “Anyone know which Rove protege is responsible for #litf08? Because they lack the execution skills of the man himself.” Browner-Hamlin is referring to former Bush administration campaign manager Karl Rove. Another commenter writes: “Hmm, it was an okay Obama frame-job, just a few inconsistencies snagged you. Overall I’d give you a ‘B.’” And another commenter asks, “Do 50 College Republicans [the description of the ‘Life in the Field’ volunteers] try this kind of stunt often?” College Republicans executive director Ethan Eilon claims his organization “had no idea” Todd “was making this story up.” [Wired News, 10/24/2008]Pittsburgh Councilman Demands Apology from McCain Campaign - The Reverend Ricky Burgess, a Pittsburgh City Council member, will demand an apology from the McCain campaign for deliberately spreading a story it had not confirmed, and for embellishing it to make it even more racially inflammatory. “That one of your campaign spokespersons would spread such an incendiary story before any confirmation of the facts is both irresponsible and runs counter to our nation’s constitutional guarantee that no one be denied life, liberty, or property without due process,” Burgess writes. He demands an apology for “inflaming the divisions of this country,” and later says: “I don’t know why they chose to push this story. But it just seems suspicious to me that they would target this story, which has a fictional African-American person harming a non-African-American person in this city.” A McCain campaign spokesman initially derides Burgess and his source, the progressive news blog TPM Election Central, writing: “The liberal blog post that the councilman cites has no basis in fact. The McCain campaign had no role in this incident. We hope the young woman involved in the incident gets the help that she needs. It’s disappointing that Pittsburgh law enforcement time and resources were wasted by her false allegations.” [WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ]

A Georgia court throws out a petition by the Reverend Tom Terry of Atlanta to force Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel to either prove presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) is an American citizen or remove him from the election ballot. “I bear no personal ill will against Barack Obama,” Terry says in a statement. “In fact, his election solely on the basis as the first African-American president-elect is a very positive thing for our nation. However, as an American, I have very grave concerns about Mr. Obama’s possible divided loyalties since he has strenuously and vigorously fought every request and every legal effort to force him to release his original birth certificate for public review and scrutiny (see June 13, 2008). I think that is significant.” Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter refuses to hear the suit, ruling: “I don’t think you have standing to bring this suit. I think that the attorney general has argued the law. I think he is correct. I think you are not a lawyer.” Terry will appeal the suit, telling a reporter: “Hopefully, this action will be noticed by other states and they will also take a serious look at the meaning of Georgia’s Supreme Court’s actions. It is apropos that the Latin motto in the Georgia Supreme Court is interpreted: ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.’ I think if the Court rules in my favor, that motto will come alive with meaning and impact.” [WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008]

Screenshot of Pamela Geller during an appearance on Fox News. [Source: Conservative News Watch (.org)]Pamela Geller, who owns the far-right blog Atlas Shrugs, posts a long, intricate screed from Rudy Schulz that claims President Obama could not have been born in Hawaii, because his mother Stanley Ann Dunham was attending classes at the University of Washington at the time. Schulz also states his belief, supported by a large amount of supposition and exposition but no real facts, that Obama forged his Hawaiian birth certificate to hide his true father: slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. The claim that Dunham was attending classes in Washington State at the time of his birth was first promoted on conservative news blog WorldNetDaily by author Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), who stated, “How Dunham was able to travel the 2,680 air miles from Honolulu to Seattle only a few days after the birth of her baby is not disclosed in the currently available public record concerning President Obama’s birth.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/4/2009] Evidence that Dunham registered for classes at the University of Washington in mid-August 1961, but actually arrived in Washington to begin her coursework in September 1961, with infant Barack in tow, is ignored by Corsi, Schulz, and Geller. [Seattle Times, 2/5/2008] After Geller receives a barrage of criticism and mockery over the “Malcolm X” claim, she updates the original blog post to read: “The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the far left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did—but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008]

A handcuffed Ashley Todd is escorted from a Pittsburgh police station by detectives. [Source: Keith Srakocic / Associated Press]Ashley Todd, the Pittsburgh woman who told police she was beaten by an African-American Obama supporter who carved a “B” (for “Barack”) into her face (see October 22, 2008), admits she lied about the incident. She was never attacked, she admits, and cut the “B” into her right cheek herself, though she says her memory is faulty on the subject. Serious Inconsistencies Lead to Polygraph, Questioning - Though Pittsburgh police began by treating Todd as the victim of a crime, they noted serious inconsistencies in her story from the outset. Originally she told a story of being mugged by a black man who, after threatening her with a knife, then struck her in the back of the head with an unknown object and knocked her to the ground, where he punched, kicked, and threatened to “teach [her] a lesson” for being a McCain supporter before kneeling and scratching the “B” into her face. Police administered a polygraph test to Todd, though they have refused to release the results of that test; police spokeswoman Diane Richard says Todd’s story began to change after the polygraph was administered. Photographs from the Citizens Bank ATM that she claimed was the site of the attack do not verify her claim. Lieutenant Kevin Kraus, who heads the major crime squad for the Pittsburgh Police Department, says, “She told lie after lie, and the situation compounded to where we are right now.” He says Todd is being kept in custody for her own protection, and says the police are considering whether she may need a psychiatric evaluation. “We don’t feel she should be able to walk out onto the street,” says Pittsburgh Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant. “We wouldn’t want any further harm to come to her.” Kraus says: “She hasn’t really shown any obvious remorse. She’s certainly surprised that it snowballed to where it is today.” Kraus says she is angry with the media for blowing the story out of proportion (see October 23-24, 2008). Bryant says: “The backwards ‘B’ was the obvious thing to us when we first saw her. Something just didn’t seem right. And, first of all, with our local robbers, they take the money [and flee]. They’re in and out. They’re not stopping to do artwork.… We suspect she may have inflicted the injuries herself. We don’t think anyone else is involved.” Bryant says that Todd’s story changed more than once while she was with police. During points in the questioning, she said, among other things: she was attacked before, not during, her visit to the ATM; she was hit from behind and rendered unconscious; she didn’t know she had been cut or robbed until she went to the apartment of a friend, Dan Garcia; the attacker sexually fondled her. “After a while, she just simply stated that she wanted to tell the truth,” Bryant says. Under questioning, Todd abandoned her story of being brutalized by a black Obama supporter, and then told police she was driving alone, looked in the rearview mirror, saw her black eye and the “B” on her face, and didn’t know how they got there. She assumed she could have done it herself, she said, and then she made up the story about the attacker as she was driving to Garcia’s house. “She saw the ‘B’ on her face, and she immediately thought about Barack,” Bryant says. Kraus says the letter’s appearance made him instantly suspicious, both because of it’s being backwards—as if it were done by Todd while looking in a mirror—and because of its unusual neatness. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008; Hollywood Grind, 10/24/2008; WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008] Richard says: “Miss Todd stated she made up the story, which snowballed and got out of control. Miss Todd stated she was not robbed and there was no 6-foot-4 black male attacker.” [WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008] Garcia says while he initially supported Todd, he is now furious with her and wants no more contact with her. “I don’t know why she would do this,” he says. “I would think that she needs help. I had red flags going up, but I didn’t think it was prudent of me to ask the truth. I wanted to make sure she was OK.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]Area of Alleged Attack Heavily Traveled - The area at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street where Todd had said the attack took place is heavily traveled in the daytime, full of traffic, pedestrians, restaurants, and stores. Doug Graham, a local resident, says it is unlikely any such assault at the Citizens Bank would go unnoticed, as Todd originally claimed. “There ain’t no way nobody saw that,” he says. “It’s always hopping up there. Something fishy, I knew the first second I saw [her story]. Something fishy.” [Fox News, 10/24/2008]Huge Waste of Money, Man-Hours - Bryant says Todd’s false report created “a huge waste of time, with many man-hours and people coming in on overtime just to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible.” Kraus adds: “It created intensive national and international attention. We’ve had detectives working around the clock since she made the bogus allegation. The cost to the city of Pittsburgh has been many, many dollars and resources.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]Todd a McCain Campaign Employee - Ethan Eilon, executive director of the College Republican National Committee, acknowledges that Todd is working as a field representative on behalf of the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, and has taken a year off from her studies at Blinn College to work on the campaign. [Fox News, 10/24/2008] Ashley Barbera, the communications director for the College Republicans, says: “We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit. Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions.” McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Peter Feldman says in a statement: “This is a sad situation. We hope she gets the help she needs.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008] However, it later emerges that Todd is not just a volunteer, but a paid campaign worker earning a stipend of $3,600 from the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). The CRNC will announce Todd’s employment in a statement announcing her termination from the organization, but will later remove the statement from its Web site. The liberal news and opinion Web site Buzzflash will preserve a portion of the CRNC’s statement. [Buzzflash, 10/24/2008]Previous Incidents - In March 2008, Todd was asked to leave a group of Ron Paul (R-TX) supporters in Texas after using dishonest campaign tactics (see March 2008). 'MySpace' Description - Todd has a MySpace profile under the screen moniker “Italian Pajamas.” She lists her occupation as “Being a bad_ss.” Next to her picture, she references the title of a song by the group Panic at the Disco, “Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her cloths [sic] off,” but adds to it “but its [sic] better if you do.” She lists as one of her favorite books The Scarlet Letter. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]Faces Charges of Filing False Police Report - Police say that Todd faces criminal charges for making a false police report, and is being held in the Allegheny County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008] The next day, Todd is charged (see October 25-30, 2008).

Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, who hosts a popular Cincinnati call-in show, accuses Democratic candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) of wanting to “gas the Jews.” In what is apparently intended to be a comedic skit, Cunningham tells a co-host: “This Obama guy loves the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]. Can’t you figure that out?… Obama wants to gas the Jews, like the PLO wants to gas the Jews, like the Nazis gassed the Jews.” Co-host Scott Sloan, playing a fictional Jewish character called “Randy Furman,” tells Cunningham that he is making the accusation because “you just don’t like one-half-percent black people, that’s your problem.” [Media Matters, 10/25/2008] Two weeks before, Cunningham told listeners that Obama may be the Antichrist (see October 10, 2008).

Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the John McCain (R-AZ) presidential campaign, is charged with filing a false report to police after falsely claiming that a black Obama supporter mugged her and carved the letter “B” (for “Barack”) into her face (see October 22, 2008 and October 24, 2008). The Times of London observes: “The incident illustrates the depth of hatred of some McCain supporters towards the Democratic nominee, who would become America’s first black president if he wins the November 4 election. Race has been a sensitive issue in the contest and a number of prominent Republicans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have criticised the increasingly divisive tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. Some supporters have been freely expressing their distaste for a black president to reporters attending McCain rallies, while cries of ‘terrorist!’ and ‘kill him’ have been heard from the crowd at televised events.” Fox News executive vice president John Moody says that, if the incident is proven false, it could do irreparable damage to the McCain campaign. “This incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election,” he writes. “If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.” [London Times, 10/25/2008] Tood soon agrees to enter a program for first-time offenders in return for being allowed to leave jail. She also is required to accept mental health treatment. If she accepts treatment, completes the program, and stays out of further trouble with the police, her record will be expunged. Todd still says she cannot explain why she invented the story. [Associated Press, 10/30/2008; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 10/30/2008]

Chicago resident Andy Martin, who has been accusing Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of being a secret Muslim since 2004, abruptly shifts his story. Now, Martin claims, Obama is not the child of a Muslim father, Barack Obama Sr., as documents have clearly and repeatedly shown (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008), but the child of Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American activist who was suspected in the 1950s of having ties to Communist organizations. Martin’s accusations, though never supported by fact, have garnered a great deal of coverage in some corners of the Internet. Martin now tells a CNN reporter that Obama’s “father was Frank Marshall Davis.” He gives no proof, and implies he has nothing more than a gut feeling. Davis was a black poet and political activist who moved to Hawaii in 1948. He wrote for a newspaper which the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) accused of being a Communist front. Right-wing Web sites have been claiming since 2007 that Davis was not only a Communist Party member but also the mentor to Obama in his teen years who he refers to in his autobiography as “Frank.” Martin’s most recent burst of prominence was an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News broadcast, where he said that “Obama’s role as a community organizer [in Chicago] was a political staging ground perpetuated by the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers.” Martin also told Hannity that Obama “probably had met William Ayers in New York, and was coming here to lay the foundations for what he thought would be some sort of political movement.” An Obama presidency, Martin predicted, would lead to “a socialist revolution, which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who’s not part of this radical ideology.” Martin readily admits that his current assertion about Obama’s parentage refutes his four-year-old claims that Obama is a Muslim. He calls himself “an honest writer and an honest researcher.… I’m known as a person who strives for the truth.” The fault is Obama’s, he says, because he “hasn’t told the truth to the American people.” [Raw Story, 10/27/2008] In a wide-ranging article about the “birther” controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, many different conservative radio hosts repeat a falsehood about presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) that originates on the Drudge Report. According to the original report, Obama told a radio audience in 2001 that he regretted the US Supreme Court did not pursue “wealth redistribution,” a concept some associate with socialism. Obama did not make such a statement; instead he said during that interview that it was a tragedy the civil rights movement “became so court-focused” in trying to bring about political and social equality. Minneapolis radio host Chris Baker misquotes Obama by claiming that he said “we gotta have economic justice and the Supreme Court ought to weigh in on redistributing wealth.” Baker adds: “Yeah, it’s too bad you kind of stuck with the Constitution as it was. It’s a tragedy that redistribution of wealth was not pursued by the Supreme Court. Can you believe that?” Baker also claims that Obama “wants to use the Supreme Court to reinterpret the Constitution in order to force the redistribution of wealth.” Baker is not the only radio host to repeat the falsehood. Sean Hannity tells his radio audience, referring to the 2001 interview, “Obama actually believes the Constitution is defective because it doesn’t allow judges to redistribute wealth.” He adds: “if he becomes president, [Obama] wants the Supreme Court and other federal courts to literally have the power to spread the wealth around and redistribute the wealth. Those are his words, his voice.” He goes on to say flatly, “Obama is a socialist.” Mark Levin tells his listeners, “what the [Supreme] Court should have done from Obama’s point of view was impose socialism from the bench.” Levin levels another false accusation against Obama: that he wants to reinterpret the 14th Amendment “to compel as a matter of constitutional law, the socialist agenda. In other words, constitutionalize redistribution of wealth.” Radio hosts Michael Savage, Jim Quinn, Brian Sussman, and others reiterate the claims, with Quinn telling listeners: “He just got done telling you that the Constitution’s only half-done. He needs to write the other half—you know, the other half where we decide how much we take from you and give to that guy down the street.” Like many of his colleagues, Sussman plays an edited clip of Obama’s 2001 statement to bolster his claims. [Media Matters, 10/28/2008; Media Matters, 11/6/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh distorts and misstates comments by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from 2001, asking listeners how Obama can be sworn in as president if he “flatly rejected” the Constitution. Limbaugh tells his listeners that Obama “calls himself a constitutional professor or a constitutional scholar. In truth, Barack Obama was an anti-constitutional professor. He studied the Constitution, and he flatly rejected it. He doesn’t like the Constitution, he thinks it is flawed, and now I understand why he was so reluctant to wear the American flag lapel pin. Why would he?… I don’t see how he can take the oath of office” because “[h]e has rejected the Constitution.” Obama said during a September 6, 2001 panel discussion on Chicago’s WBEZ radio that the Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” Obama’s criticism was directed at the Founding Fathers’ handling of the issue of slavery in the Constitution. Later in the discussion, Obama said that the Constitution is “a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now.” Limbaugh plays carefully edited clips from the WBEZ program but does not play the larger portion of Obama’s remarks that give a fuller picture of his meaning. Instead, he falsely accuses Obama of saying that the Constitution cannot “be fixed,” and asks: “How is he going to… how is he gonna place his hand on the Bible and swear that he, Barack Hussein Obama, will uphold the Constitution that he feels reflects the nation’s fundamental flaw. Fundamental. When he talks about a fundamental flaw, he’s not talking about a flaw that can be fixed. Fundamental means that this document is, from the get-go, wrong.” Media Matters notes that “several influential Republicans,” including President Bush, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Chief Justice John Roberts, “have articulated a similar view” to Obama’s. [Media Matters, 10/28/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, discussing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s parentage, says of Obama’s father: “[I]magine at the age of one or two seeing your father for the last time. See, his father was a typical black father who, right after the birth, left the baby. That’s what black fathers do. They simply leave.” Cunningham then calls Obama’s mother “a Communist” who married “a radical Muslim,” who he refers to as “Barry Soetoro,” and then “rejected” her son at age 10, resulting in Obama’s being sent to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. [Media Matters, 10/30/2008] However, the name of Obama’s stepfather is Lolo Soetoro, not Barry Soetoro. In addition, he is said not to have been a devout Muslim. For example, according to the New York Times, he was “a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.” [New York Times, 4/30/2007]

Cover illustration of the ‘Hype’ DVD. [Source: Amazon (.com)]The conservative lobbying group Citizens United (CU) distributes hundreds of thousands of DVDs in newspapers throughout Ohio, Florida, and Nevada, all considered “swing states” in the upcoming presidential election. The DVDs contain a “documentary” entitled Hype: The Obama Effect and are characterized by CU as “truthful attack[s]” on Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). Previous advertisements for the film said the film portrays Obama as an “overhyped media darling,” and quoted conservative pundit Tucker Carlson as saying: “The press loves Obama. I mean not just love, but sort of like an early teenage crush.” The DVD distribution takes place just days before the November 4 election. CU says it is spending over a million dollars to distribute around 1.25 million DVDs, which are included with delivery and store-bought copies of five newspapers: the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Palm Beach (Florida) Post, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The film attacks Obama’s record on abortion rights, foreign policy, and what the Associated Press calls his “past relationships” with, among others, his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright (see January 6-11, 2008). The DVD also attempts to tie Obama to political corruption in Illinois, and lambasts the news media for what CU calls its preferential treatment of Obama. CU president David Bossie says: “We think it’s a truthful attack. People can take it any way they want.” Bossie was fired from his position on a Republican House member’s staff in 1998 for releasing fraudulently edited transcripts of a former Clinton administration official to falsely imply that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton had committed crimes (see May 1998). Among those interviewed about Obama for the film are conservative columnist Robert Novak, conservative pundit Dick Morris, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), and author and pundit Jerome Corsi, whom the AP terms a “discredited critic” of Obama. Obama campaign spokesman Isaac Baker calls the DVD “slash and burn politics,” and says the DVD is another tactic of the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ) to “smear” Obama with “dishonest, debunked attacks from the fringes of the far right.” [New York Times, 7/22/2008; Associated Press, 10/28/2008; Media Matters, 10/29/2008]Newspaper Official Defends Decision to Include DVD - Palm Beach Post general manager Charles Gerardi says of his paper’s decision to include the DVD in its Friday distribution: “Citizens United has every right to place this message as a paid advertisement, and our readers have every right to see it, even if they don’t agree with it. That we accepted it as a paid advertisement in no way implies that this newspaper agrees or disagrees with its message.” [Palm Beach Post, 10/31/2008]Falsehoods, Misrepresentations, and Lies - Within days, the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters finds that the DVD is riddled with errors, misrepresentations, and lies. Claim that Obama 'Threw' Illinois State Senate Election - On the DVD, author David Freddoso claims that in 1998, Obama managed to “thr[o]w all of his opponents off the ballot” to win an election to the Illinois State Senate, a claim that has been disproved. Claim that Obama Refuses to Work with Republicans - Freddoso also asserts that there are no instances of Obama’s stints in the Illinois State Senate nor the US Senate where he was willing to work with Republicans on legislation, an assertion that Freddoso himself inadvertently disproves by citing several instances of legislation Obama joined with Republicans to pass. Claim that Obama Wants to Raise Taxes on Middle Class and Small Business - The DVD’s narrator misrepresents Obama’s campaign statements to falsely claim that Obama has promised to “irrevocabl[y]” raise taxes on citizens making over $100,000 to fund Social Security; the reality is that Obama’s proposed tax increase would affect citizens making $250,000 or more. The DVD narrator makes similarly false claims about Obama’s stance on raising the capital gains tax, and on raising taxes on small business owners. Conservative radio host Armstrong Williams tells viewers that Obama will raise taxes on small businesses that employ only a few workers, when in fact Obama has repeatedly proposed cutting taxes on most small businesses. Huckabee makes similar claims later in the DVD. Claim that Obama Supports Immigration 'Amnesty' - The narrator misrepresents Obama’s stance on immigration reform as “amnesty for the 12 to 20 million people who violated US immigration law,” a position that Obama’s “Plan for Immigration” rejects. Claim that Obama Wants 'Centralized Government' Health Care - Blackwell, now a contributing editor for the conservative publication TownHall, falsely claims that Obama wants to implement what he calls “a centralized government program that hasn’t worked in Canada, hasn’t worked in England, that has actually taken the freedom from the consumer and limited the choices.” Organizations such as PolitiFact and the New York Times have called claims that Obama supports government-run “single payer” health care false. Claim that Obama Refused to Protect Lives of Infants - Conservative columnist and anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek claims that Obama opposed legislation that would have protected the lives of babies “born alive” during botched abortion efforts, when in fact no such legislation was ever proposed—the law already protects babies in such circumstances—and the Illinois Department of Public Health has said no such case exists in its records. (Stanek has claimed that she has witnessed such incidents during her time as an Illinois hospital worker.) Stanek has said that she believes domestic violence against women who have had abortions is acceptable, claimed that Chinese people eat aborted fetuses as “much sought after delicacies,” and claimed that Obama “supports infanticide.” Claim that Obama Supported Attack on Petraeus - The DVD narrator claims that as a US senator, Obama refused to vote for a bill that condemned an attack by liberal grassroots activist organization MoveOn.org on General David Petraeus. In reality, Obama did vote to support an amendment that condemned the MoveOn advertisement. Claim that Obama Supported Award for Farrakhan - The DVD narrator claims that Obama has aligned himself with the controversial head of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and cites the 2007 decision by Obama’s then-church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, to award a lifetime achievement award to Farrakhan. In reality, Obama denounced Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, and stated that he did not agree with the Trinity decision to give Farrakhan the award. Claim of Suspiciously Preferential Loan Rate - The DVD narrator claims that Obama received a suspiciously “preferential rate on his super-jumbo loan for the purchase” of a “mansion” in Hyde Park, Illinois, from Northern Trust, an Illinois bank. A Washington Post reporter did make such a claim in a report, but subsequent investigation by Politico and the Columbia Journalism Review showed that the rate Obama received on the loan was consistent with other loans Northern Trust made at the time and not significantly below the average loan rate. 'Citizen of the World' - Corsi claims that Obama does not consider himself an American, but a “citizen of the world.” Media Matters has found numerous instances where Obama proclaims himself a proud American as well as “a fellow citizen of the world.” In 1982, Media Matters notes, then-President Reagan addressed the United Nations General Assembly by saying, “I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world.” Media Matters notes that Corsi’s anti-Obama book Obama Nation was widely and thoroughly debunked (see August 1, 2008 and After), and since its publication, Corsi has made a number of inflammatory and false accusations about Obama and his family (see August 15, 2008, August 16, 2008, September 7, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, July 21, 2009, and September 21, 2010). [Media Matters, 10/30/2008]

Hawaii’s Director of Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the Hawaii Department of Health holds Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s original birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Fukino says that she has “personally seen and verified that the Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” Fukino and Onaka thereby verify that Obama is, indeed, an American citizen. Fukino releases the statement in an attempt to stem the tide of conspiracy theories that assert Obama is not a US citizen—“birtherism”—and therefore cannot be eligible to be president. Fukino adds that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), ever issued instructions that Obama’s certificate be handled differently. Hawaii state law prohibits the release of the so-called “long form” birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest; state law says that the “short form” the state releases to its citizens, and that Obama has long ago made public (see June 13, 2008), is legal and valid in and of itself. State courts in Ohio, Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008), and Washington State have recently dismissed court challenges to Obama’s citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008; Associated Press, 10/31/2008] Fukino tells a Honolulu reporter: “This has gotten ridiculous (see July 20, 2008). There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.” Asked if this “[w]ill be enough to quiet the doubters,” Fukino responds: “I hope so. We need to get some work done.” [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]

Leo C. Donofrio. [Source: Obama Conspiracy (.org)]Retired New Jersey attorney, professional gambler, and conservative blogger Leo C. Donofrio files a lawsuit asking the State Supreme Court to prohibit three candidates from appearing on New Jersey’s presidential ballot: Barack Obama (D-IL), John McCain (R-AZ), and Socialist Worker’s Party candidate Roger Calero. Donofrio claims that none of the three have proven to his satisfaction that they are “natural born citizens,” as the Constitution requires to serve as president (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). The lawsuit asks Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells to intervene in the elections process. In his filing, Donofrio writes that Obama is not eligible for the presidency “even if it were proved he was born in Hawaii, since… Senator Obama’s father was born in Kenya and therefore, having been born with split and competing loyalties, candidate Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen.’” Obama has long ago posted his authentic birth certificate stating he was born in Hawaii and therefore is a US citizen (see June 13, 2008). McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone (see March 14 - July 24, 2008) and Calero’s birth in Nicaragua, Donofrio continues, invalidate their ability to be president as well, even though the Constitution states otherwise. With three ineligible presidential candidates on ballots, Donofrio warns, New Jersey voters will “witness firsthand the fraud their electoral process has become.” After being rejected by the New Jersey Court, US Supreme Court Justice David Souter rejects the lawsuit’s appearance on the Court docket. Justice Clarence Thomas allows the case to be submitted for consideration, but the Court rejects it. [Leo C. Donofrio v. Nina Mitchell Wells, Secretary of State of the State of New Jersey, 10/31/2008; WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008; Obama Conspiracy (.org), 12/21/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 6/28/2010] After his case is thrown out, Donofrio will write on his blog that “you have no Constitution and you have no ‘Supreme’ court. You have a filthy corrupted snake pit which tried to protect itself from responsibility for this issue by using clerks like brutal praetorian guards.” [Obama Conspiracy (.org), 12/21/2008] An Internet rumor that Justice Antonin Scalia will “quietly” place the case on the Court docket is later proven entirely false (see June 28, 2010).

The US’s two most popular conservative radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, are repeatedly labeling the current economic collapse the “Obama recession,” even though the recession has started already, and President-elect Barack Obama was only elected on November 4 and will not assume the presidency until January 20, 2009. Blaming Obama for Wall Street Plunge - According to reports by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Hannity’s guest Dick Morris, a conservative political operative, tells a Fox News audience on November 6 that the stock market plunge is directly attributable to Obama’s election and his intention to “raise the capital gains tax.” Hannity calls the stock market plunge “the Obama tanking.” On the same day, Limbaugh says on his show: “We have the largest market plunge after an election in history. Thank you, man-child Barack Obama.” [Media Matters, 11/7/2008] Hannity says on November 11 that Obama’s election is directly responsible for plunging stock market performances, telling his listeners: “Wall Street keeps sinking. Could it be the Obama recession: The fear that taxes are gonna go up, forcing people to pull out of the market?” On November 12, Limbaugh echoes Hannity’s characterization, telling his listeners that, as reported by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “the recession isn’t President Bush’s fault. It’s the fault, catch this, of the president who hasn’t yet taken office. It’s an ‘Obama recession’; that’s what he’s calling it.” Matthews, clearly impatient with Limbaugh’s characterization, calls the host’s statement an example of “the bitter sore loser’s rhetoric we are hearing from the right these days.” [Media Matters, 11/12/2008]Experts Credit Obama with Wall Street Stabilization - Experts refute Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s attribution of the nation’s economic calamity to Obama, with the Wall Street Journal giving Obama credit for a post-election upturn in the stock market and blaming “lame economic data” and the continuing “drumbeat of bailouts, potential bailouts, and worries about other bailouts” for the stock market’s poor performance. [Wall Street Journal, 11/12/2008] Fox News business commentator Eric Bolling credits Obama’s election with stabilizing the stock market until a dismal national employment report caused the market to drop again. And Fox Business Channel’s vice president, Alexis Glick, tells her audience on November 7: “I so did not believe that the market reaction over the past two days was about Obama. Wednesday morning we walked in, we saw the Challenger and Gray [planned layoff] numbers, we saw the ADP numbers, the weekly jobless claim numbers—yeah, well, they were basically in line, but we knew two days ago that this was going to be a bloody number. Frankly, we probably knew several months ago that it was going to be a bloody number.” The Wall Street Journal and New York Times both agree with Glick’s assessment. [Media Matters, 11/7/2008; New York Times, 11/7/2008]

Libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX—see 1978-1996, July 9-10, 2006, July 22, 2007, and August 4, 2008) gives an interview to radio host Alex Jones in which he accuses President-elect Barack Obama of working to undermine the US government in favor of a “new world order” (see September 11, 1990), a UN-led “one-world government.” Paul says that he believes the incoming Obama administration is orchestrating some sort of “international crisis” that will give Obama the chance to begin implementing his sinister plan: “I think it’s going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they’ll probably make it sound very limited, they’re not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world’s money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.… A world central bank, worldwide regulation and world control of the whole system, of all the commodities and all the natural resources, what else can you call it other than world government?… Obama wouldn’t be there if he didn’t toe the line.… [T]his could be the beginning of the end of what’s left of our national sovereignty.” Paul says that many non-US media outlets are already hailing Obama as “the world’s leader.” [Crooks and Liars, 11/17/2008]

Conservative radio host Lars Larson says that President Obama intends to make gun ownership illegal. Larson tells his listeners, “I’m worried that when he starts naming people to the court, when that—when that happens, and it’s likely to during his administration, we’re going to end up with justices who think they can break free of the constraints of the Constitution—perhaps on the Second Amendment, one of my favorites.” Larson later reads a letter from a listener stating: “Lars, I’ve always said that if the gun-grabbers come to my front door and demand my guns due to some unconstitutional law being passed by the loony lefties in Washington, DC, I’ll have no choice but to hand them over. However, they will receive all of my ammunition first, all of it, just as fast as I can possibly give it to them.” [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

After the election of Barack Obama as president (see November 4, 2008), the Libertarian Party of Illinois begins formulating a concept it calls the “Boston Tea Party Chicago,” and begins advertising this through its Yahoo and “meetup” groups, through the Ron Paul Meetup and Campaign for Liberty groups, and through various anti-tax groups. Dave Brady of the Libertarian Party of Illinois later claims that “we gave [CNBC commentator] Rick Santelli the idea for the Tax Day Tea Parties” (see February 19, 2009). One of the Libertarian Party of Illinois list members, Eric Odom, with a history of campaigning against proposed regulations on offshore oil drilling, takes a position as the new media director of the Sam Adams Alliance. Odom and his fellow Illinois Libertarians begin expanding the original “Boston Tea Party Chicago” concept, creating an Internet-based network of conservative activists that will become a centerpiece of tea party organizing. [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that President-elect Barack Obama’s grandmother “suspiciously died virtually the night before the election,” in an apparent attempt to question Obama’s pre-election trip to Hawaii. Obama visited his grandmother in late October, shortly before her death on November 3. Savage ties in his questions about Obama’s grandmother and her “suspicious death” to discredited claims that Obama has been unable to verify his US citizenship. Savage tells his listeners: “Well, we don’t even know where Obama was born. His grandmother died the night before the election. There’s a lot of questions around this character that the media won’t answer. Let’s start with what country he’s from. Why was the birth certificate never produced? Why in the world did he take time off from the campaign to visit the grandmother who then suddenly and suspiciously died virtually the night before the election? Tell me about that.” Savage and other conservative commentators have suggested that Obama went to Hawaii, not to visit his gravely ill grandmother, but to address charges that his birth certificate is not valid. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008] Savage is one of a number of conservative radio hosts to spread false rumors about Obama’s birth certificate (see October 8-10, 2008). Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate months before (see June 13, 2008). A number of organizations have verified that Obama’s birth certificate is valid and authentic (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), as have Hawaii Health Department officials (see October 30, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/23/2008; FactCheck (.org), 11/1/2008] According to Talkers Magazine, Savage is third in talk-radio listenership across the US, behind fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008]

Paul Broun. [Source: Associated Press / Washington Blade]Responding to President-elect Barack Obama’s proposal for a “civilian national security force,” an idea supported by President Bush and designed in part to revive the moribund Americorps (see March 31, 2009), Representative Paul Broun (R-GA) accuses Obama of wanting to establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship. “It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Broun says. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.… That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the US military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.” Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor says the candidate was referring to a “civilian reserve corps” that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts in lieu of the military. The idea has been endorsed by the Bush administration. Broun also says that if elected, Obama will ban gun ownership among American citizens. Obama has repeatedly says he respects the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, and favors “common sense” gun laws. Some gun advocates fear that Obama will curb ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. “We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun says. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.” [Associated Press, 11/11/2008; Think Progress, 11/11/2008]

Alan Keyes. [Source: WorldNetDaily (.com)]Alan Keyes (R-IL), the unsuccessful presidential candidate who ran under the American Independent Party banner, files a petition, Keyes v. Bowen, with the Superior Court of California in Sacramento. The action is filed by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation on behalf of Keyes, along with well-known “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz. Two California electors, Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, are also named with Keyes in the action. Keyes’s “Petition for Writ of Mandate” claims that President-elect Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s US citizenship is unproven (see (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008) and therefore he must be stopped from taking office until it is proven one way or the other. “Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void,” the petition states, “Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal.” The petition requests that Secretary of State Debra Bowen be prevented “from both certifying to the governor the names of the California Electors, and from transmitting to each presidential Elector a Certificate of Election, until such documentary proof is produced and verified showing that Senator Obama is a ‘natural born’ citizen of the United States and does not hold citizenship of Indonesia, Kenya, or Great Britain.” It continues with a request for a writ barring California’s electors from signing the Certificate of Vote until documentary proof is produced. The defendants include Bowen, Obama, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden (D-DE), and the 55 California electors. The petition uses a fraudulently edited audiotape (see October 16, 2008 and After) as primary evidence that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president. Referring to the tape’s transcript, and a previously dismissed lawsuit by Philip Berg (see August 21-24, 2008) currently using the same audiotape to justify an appellate reversal, Keyes writes, “Mr. Berg provided documents [to the Supreme Court] to the effect that Senator Obama was born in what is now Kenya… and that his paternal grandmother was present at his birth.” The petition states as a “fact” that Obama’s paternal grandmother stated that “she was present during [his] birth… [she] affirmed that she ‘was in the delivery room in Kenya when he was born Aug. 4, 1961.’” The suit asks that the court issue an immediate injunction prohibiting California’s 55 electors from voting for Obama in the upcoming Electoral College vote on December 15, 2008, which would prevent Obama from being officially declared president. Keyes’s writ asks that documentary proof be received and verified by the California secretary of state that the allegations are false and that Obama is affirmatively proven to be a “natural born citizen” by a series of tests not required of any previous president-elect. Investigative blogger Greg Doudna will speculate that Keyes’s extraordinary actions have been sparked in part because he has now been twice defeated by Obama in elections; Obama defeated him in an Illinois election for US Senate in 2004. [Keyes et al v. Bowie et al, 11/13/2008 ; WorldNetDaily, 11/14/2008; Sacramento Union, 11/15/2008; Greg Doudna, 12/9/2008 ] After filing the lawsuit, Keyes tells a reporter: “I and others are concerned that this issue be properly investigated and decided before Senator Obama takes office. Otherwise there will be a serious doubt as to the legitimacy of his tenure. This doubt would also affect the respect people have for the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. I hope the issue can be quickly clarified so that the new president can take office under no shadow of doubt. This will be good for him and for the nation.” [Sacramento Union, 11/15/2008]'Pure Garbage' - An Obama spokesperson tells WorldNetDaily: “All I can tell you is that it [the petition] is just pure garbage. There have been several lawsuits, but they have been dismissed.” [WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008]Affidavit from Phony 'Computer Graphics Expert' - Self-described “computer graphics expert” “Dr. Ron Polarik,” a conservative blogger, records a video (that blurs his face and disguises his voice) explaining how the actual Obama birth certificate was forged using Photoshop. Polarik submits an affidavit in support of the filing, but because he signs it “XXXXXXXXXXX,” the affidavit is inadmissible. Kreep later tells a reporter, “If it ever comes down to it, we’ll use his real name.” [Washington Independent, 7/24/2009] The Berg lawsuit also used material supplied by Polarik. Computer forensics expert Dr. Neal Krawetz later determines that Polarik’s analysis is a clumsy fraud perpetuated by an amateur with no real expertise. [Neal Krawetz, 11/25/2008; Washington Independent, 7/24/2009; Hacker Factor, 2011] Libertarian lawyer Loren Collins later traces a timeline of what he will call Polarik’s “ever-changing resume,” and questions Polarik’s claims to his several doctorates and areas of expertise. [Loren Collins, 7/7/2009] Collins later discovers that “Polarik” is actually a man named Ronald Jay Polland, who holds a doctorate in instructional systems, has experience conducting surveys and statistical reports, operates a one-man consulting firm in Florida, and describes himself on his MySpace page as an “[e]xpert advisor on relationships, romance, and… dating.” Polland’s resume, unlike “Polarik’s,” claims no expertise in document forensics, computing systems, or graphics. [Loren Collins, 7/29/2009] Krawetz will learn that Polland claimed to use a pseudonym on the Internet because “he fears threats from Obama supporters.” [Neal Krawetz, 11/25/2008]

WTMJ-AM logo. [Source: Ignite Your Life (.org)]Dan Shelley, the former news director/assistant program director at Milwaukee’s WTMJ AM talk radio station, writes of the methodologies he and other programming experts used to make their talk show hosts popular. Like many other radio stations, WTMJ hosts primarily conservative broadcasters, though its only nationally syndicated host with a political bent is former comedian Dennis Miller. Two of its most popular local broadcasters are conservatives Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner. (Shelley is quite complimentary of Sykes in particular as a top-flight talk show host.) Shelley notes: “I was often angrily asked, once by then-Mayor John Norquist, why we just didn’t change our call letters to ‘WGOP.’ The complaints were just another sign of our impact.” 'Differentiating' - Shelley writes that Sykes and Wagner “are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.” Hosts such as Sykes and Wagner “must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims,” he writes, “and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners. This enemy can be a politician—either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a ‘RINO’ (a ‘Republican In Name Only,’ who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the ‘mainstream media’—local or national, print or broadcast.… In the talk radio business, this concept, which must be mastered to be successful, is called ‘differentiating’ yourself from the rest of the media. It is a brilliant marketing tactic that has also helped Fox News Channel thrive. ‘We report, you decide’ and ‘Fair and Balanced’ are more than just savvy slogans. They are code words signaling that only Fox will report the news in a way conservatives see as objective and truthful.” Vicitimization - One of their most successful strategies is to play into the perception that hosts and audience alike are “victims” of what Shelley sardonically calls “the left-wing spin machine.” Any criticism, especially personal epithets such as “right-winger” or “radio squawker” merely plays into those hosts’ hands, Shelley notes. “This allows a host like Sykes to portray himself as a victim… and will leave his listeners, who also feel victimized, dying to support him.” One-Sided Discussions - However, talk show hosts rarely, if ever, present “fair, evenhanded discussions featuring a diversity of opinions.… Programmers learned long ago that benign conversations led by hosts who present all sides of an issue don’t attract large audiences.… Pointed and provocative are what win.” Shelley writes that callers never “win a disagreement” with Sykes or Wagner. Calls from listeners who disagree with them do not get on the air “if the show’s producer, who generally does the screening, fears they might make [the host] look bad. Sykes’s producer even denied calls from US Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), the current and former mayors of Milwaukee, and other prominent figures. However, callers with dissenting points of view would get on the air if the host could “use the dissenting caller to reinforce his original point… [b]y belittling the caller’s point of view.” Shelley notes of Sykes: “You can always tell, however, when the antagonist has gotten the better of Charlie. That’s when he starts attacking the caller personally.” More Diversity in Audience than Readily Acknowledged - Shelley writes that many liberals believe talk radio audiences are composed of “angry, uneducated white men.” Such is not the case, he writes. “Many are businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, academics, clergy, or soccer moms and dads. Talk show fans are not stupid. They will detect an obvious phony. The best hosts sincerely believe everything they say. Their passion is real. Their arguments have been carefully crafted in a manner they know will be meaningful to the audience, and that validates the views these folks were already thinking.” Shaping Opinion - Listeners cannot be “led like lemmings” to a particular conclusion, Shelley writes, but “they can be carefully prodded into agreement with the Republican views of the day.” Conservative talk show hosts, both national and local, receive “daily talking points emails from the Bush White House, the Republican National Committee, and, during election years, GOP campaign operations. They’re not called talking points, but that’s what they are. I know, because I received them, too.” Shelley writes that Sykes would “mine the emails, then couch the daily message in his own words.… Wagner would be more likely to rely on them verbatim.” Both Sykes and Wagner keep abreast of what other conservative hosts are saying: “Rush Limbaugh’s Web site was checked at least once daily. Atlanta-based nationally syndicated talker Neal Boortz was another popular choice.” Strategic Disagreement - On occasion, Shelley writes, “[a] smart talk show host will, from time to time, disagree publicly with a Republican president, the Republican Party, or some conservative doctrine.” President Bush’s selection of his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, for the Supreme Court gave Sykes, Wagner, and other conservatives the chance to disagree vehemently with the administration. But, Shelley notes, “these disagreements are strategically chosen to prove the host is an independent thinker, without appreciably harming the president or party. This is not to suggest that hosts don’t genuinely disagree with the conservative line at times. They do, more often than you might think. But they usually keep it to themselves.” Selective Facts - Shelley notes that it is often difficult to refute the arguments of a host such as Sykes, who builds “strong case[s] with lots of supporting facts.” Shelley notes that usually “those facts have been selectively chosen because they support the host’s preconceived opinion, or can be interpreted to seem as if they do.… Hosts… gather evidence, but in a way that modifies the old Joe Friday maxim: ‘Just the facts that I can use to make my case, ma’am.’” Rhetorical Strategies - Shelley writes of the two main strategies conservatives (and presumably other talk show hosts of other political stripes) use to bolster weak arguments or refute strong opposing points of view. He calls them “You Know What Would Happen If” and “The Preemptive Strike.” Shelley writes: “Using the first strategy, a host will describe something a liberal has said or done that conservatives disagree with, but for which the liberal has not been widely criticized, and then say: ‘You know what would happen if a conservative had said (or done) that? He (or she) would have been filleted by the “liberal media.”’ This is particularly effective because it’s a two-fer, simultaneously reinforcing the notion that conservatives are victims and that ‘liberals’ are the enemy.” He then notes: “The second strategy, The Preemptive Strike, is used when a host knows that news reflecting poorly on conservative dogma is about to break or become more widespread. When news of the alleged massacre at Haditha first trickled out in the summer of 2006, not even Iraq War chest-thumper Charlie Sykes would defend the US Marines accused of killing innocent civilians in the Iraqi village. So he spent lots of air time criticizing how the ‘mainstream media’ was sure to sensationalize the story in the coming weeks. Charlie would kill the messengers before any message had even been delivered.” Such strategies, and others, are reliable and effective, Shelley notes. Double Standards - Shelley gives numerous examples of the hosts’ double standards with various issues. “In the talk show world, the line-item veto was the most effective way to control government spending when Ronald Reagan was president; it was a violation of the separation of powers after President Clinton took office.” “Perjury was a heinous crime when Clinton was accused of lying under oath about his extramarital activities. But when [Lewis ‘Scooter’] Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, was charged with lying under oath, it was the prosecutor who had committed an egregious act by charging Libby with perjury.” “‘Activist judges’ are the scourge of the earth when they rule it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the rights heterosexuals receive. But judicial activism is needed to stop the husband of a woman in a persistent vegetative state—say Terri Schiavo—from removing her feeding tube to end her suffering.” Shelley adds: “To amuse myself while listening to a talk show, I would ask myself what the host would say if the situation were reversed. What if alleged DC Madam client Senator David Vitter [R-LA] had been a Democrat? Would the reaction of talk show hosts have been so quiet you could hear crickets chirping? Hardly. Or what if former Representative Mark Foley [R-FL] had been a Democrat? Would his pedophile-like tendencies have been excused as a ‘prank’ or mere ‘overfriendly emails?’ Not on the life of your teenage son. Suppose Al Gore was president and ordered an invasion of Iraq without an exit strategy. Suppose this had led to the deaths of more than 4,000 US troops and actually made that part of the world less stable. Would talk show hosts have dismissed criticism of that war as unpatriotic? No chance. Or imagine that John Kerry had been president during Hurricane Katrina and that his administration’s rescue and rebuilding effort had been horribly botched. Would talk show hosts have branded him a great president? Of course not.” Katrina an Epiphany - Shelley notes that it was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of that disaster that convinced him conservative talk show hosts such as Sykes and Wagner were extremists, and not merely a counterbalance to a left-skewed national media. Shelley was horrified when Sykes and Wagner, emulating their more prominent nationally syndicated colleagues such as Limbaugh and Miller, did not criticize the government’s lethally slow and callous response, but instead attacked the journalists who were obviously part of an “angry left” conspiracy to unfairly smear the Bush administration. Conclusion - Shelley writes: “[T]he key reason talk radio succeeds is because its hosts can exploit the fears and perceived victimization of a large swath of conservative-leaning listeners. And they feel victimized because many liberals and moderates have ignored or trivialized their concerns and have stereotyped these Americans as uncaring curmudgeons. Because of that, there will always be listeners who believe that Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner, and their compatriots are the only members of the media who truly care about them.” [Milwaukee Magazine, 11/13/2008; WTMJ-AM, 11/13/2008]

Warren County, Ohio, magistrate Andrew Hasselbach throws out a challenge by Ohio resident David M. Neal to President Obama’s qualifications to serve as president. Before the election, Neal filed a complaint that demanded Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner either prove Obama is a US citizen (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008) or throw him off the ballot. Hasselbach writes that Neal gave too much credence to Internet rumors surrounding Obama’s citizenship, and writes: “The onus is upon one who challenges such public officer to demonstrate an abuse of discretion by admissible evidence—not hearsay, conclusory allegations, or pure speculation. It is abundantly clear that the allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint concerning ‘questions’ about Senator Obama’s status as a ‘natural born citizen’ are derived from Internet sources, the accuracy of which has not been demonstrated to either Defendant Brunner or this magistrate.” Neal had asked that Brunner obtain documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party, and possibly Obama himself to verify that Obama was born in Hawaii and not elsewhere. Neal asserted that the authentic certificate provided by the Obama campaign (see June 13, 2008) is not an original, and therefore not valid proof of birth. Neal, who maintains a politically oriented Web site, says he is part of what he calls a nationwide grassroots movement questioning Obama’s citizenship. When he filed the complaint, he said, referring to a local school: “When I enrolled my son in Knothole, I had to show his birth certificate.… This guy is running for president of the United States.” In arguing against Neal’s motion, Assistant Attorney General Mike Schuler told the court: “One can conservatively estimate that more than 3 million Ohioans intend to vote for Senator Obama. Mr. Neal asks this court to disenfranchise those 3 million voters based solely on rumor and innuendo.” [Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/31/2008]

Conservative radio host and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy (see March 23, 1974) advises his listeners not to register their firearms. (Failure to register a firearm is a crime.) Liddy makes the suggestion because he believes the Obama administration intends to take away citizens’ guns, and if the guns are not registered, government and law enforcement officials have no way to locate them and their owners. While talking to a caller about assault weapons, Liddy says: “[P]eople are buying them. Some because they’ve always wanted one and think that the Obama administration will try to outlaw them again, the way the Clinton administration did (see September 13, 1994). Others figure: ‘OK, I’ll buy as many as I can get my hands on, and I’ll be grandfathered in. And then when they’re banned, I will be able to sell them at a very nice profit.’ So, that’s going on. But the main thing is, you know, get them into private hands as quickly as possible.… The first thing you do is, no matter what law they pass, do not—repeat, not—ever register any of your firearms. Because that’s where they get the list of where to go first to confiscate. So, you don’t ever register a firearm, anywhere.” [Media Matters, 4/9/2009] In 1994, Liddy advised radio listeners to shoot federal agents in the head if they came to their houses to confiscate their guns. “Head shots, head shots.… Kill the sons of b_tches,” he said (see August 26 - September 15, 1994).

Conservative radio host Michael Savage, who has previously accused President-elect Barack Obama of being part of “the first affirmative-action [campaign] in American history” (see February 1, 2008), of being a radical Islamist (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, and April 3, 2008), and of being sympathetic to the Nazis (see March 13, 2008), says Obama will oversee the “wholesale replacement of competent white men” from government jobs through the federal, state, and even local levels. As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage tells his listeners: “You haven’t seen any of what’s coming in this country. You are going to see the wholesale replacement of competent white men, and I’m targeting exactly the group that’s gonna be thrown out of jobs in the government. And I’ll say it, and I’ll be the first to say it, and I may be not the only—the last to say it. I am telling you that there’s gonna be a wholesale firing of competent white men in the United States government up and down the line, in police departments, in fire departments. Everywhere in America, you’re going to see an exchange that you’ve never seen in history, and it’s not gonna be necessarily for the betterment of this country.” Accusation of 'Social Promotion' - Savage says that Obama was “socially promoted” to the presidency, a disparaging reference to the practice of promoting children to higher grades even if they have not done the work necessary to be promoted, and says: “If you’re socially promoted your whole life and nobody challenges you because you’re of the proper constitution and composition and you look exactly right and no one’s—everyone’s afraid to say a word to you, why, you then go to Harvard, you then go to the law review, you then get elected, you then get elected to the next level. This is what happens in a country that’s intimidated by its own policies and its own fears.” [Media Matters, 11/19/2008]Obama Avoided Mention of Race on College Application? - Some of Obama’s classmates recall that when he applied for Harvard Law School, he refused to indicate his race so as to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an action the Obama campaign has declined to affirm or deny. In 1990, as a law student defending the program, Obama wrote that he had “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” during his educational career. [New York Times, 8/3/2008]

The conservative Washington Times, a staunch opponent of President-elect Barack Obama, publishes an editorial predicting that the incoming Obama administration will, in some form or fashion, move to “exterminate” babies with disabilities and other “useless” Americans through its promised reform of the US health care system, similar to actions taken by the Nazis before World War II. The Times provides a brief synopsis of Adolf Hitler’s “T4 Aktion” program designed, in the words of the Times, “to exterminate ‘useless eaters,’ babies born with disabilities. When any baby was born in Germany, the attending nurse had to note any indication of disability and immediately notify T4 officials—a team of physicians, politicians, and military leaders. In October 1939 Hitler issued a directive allowing physicians to grant a ‘mercy death’ to ‘patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health.’ Thereafter, the program expanded to include older children and adults with disabilities, and anyone anywhere in the Third Reich was subject to execution who was blind, deaf, senile, retarded, or had any significant neurological condition, encephalitis, epilepsy, muscular spasticity, or paralysis. Six killing centers were eventually established, and an estimated quarter-million people with disabilities were executed.” The Times draws a parallel between the Nazis and the Obama administration’s support for legal abortion and for physician-assisted suicide, which it equates with “euthanasia.” The incoming administration will, the Times fears, begin “selecting” babies with disabilities for what apparently will be “selective abortions.” It quotes the Reverend Briane K. Turley as saying: “Were God’s design for us left unhindered, we could naturally expect to welcome 40,000 or more newborn infants with Down syndrome each year in the US. And yet we have reduced that number to just under 5,500. These data strongly indicate that, in North America, we have already discovered a new, ‘final solution’ for these unusual children and need only to adapt our public policies to, as it were, ‘cure’ all Down syndrome cases.” Turley, the Times notes, claims that “there is growing evidence suggesting that, among health care practitioners and systems, the central motivation behind legally enforced or high pressure screenings is economics.” The Times then adds: “[A]nd the results seem to bear him out. America’s T4 program—trivialization of abortion, acceptance of euthanasia, and the normalization of physician assisted suicide—is highly unlikely to be stopped at the judicial, administrative, or legislative levels anytime soon, given the Supreme Court’s current and probable future makeup during the Obama administration, the administrative predilections that are likely from that incoming administration, and the makeup of the new Congress.” The Times predicts a new “final solution” of “extermination” that will start with disabled infants and will progress “from prenatal to postnatal to child to adult.” [Washington Times, 11/23/2008] The editorial anticipates the “deather” claims that many conservatives will make in the summer of 2009 (see January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, Shortly Before August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 12, 2009, August 12, 2009, and August 13, 2009).

President-elect Barack Obama faces another challenge to his presidency—an Internet-based effort to block the US Electoral College from certifying him as president, according to a report from the Christian Science Monitor. The challenge centers on long-debunked accusations that Obama is not a US citizen (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). The Electoral College meets on December 15 to cast its votes, as garnered through the November 4 election results. The Constitution requires that the president be a US citizen; the people behind this effort insist that Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as his birth certificate attests. North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall says: “Most of the world thinks this is settled except for a few conspiracy theorists. In the 2000 election… Republican electors felt under siege, and I expect the Democrat electors may end up feeling the same way [this time].” North Carolina elector Wayne Abraham (D-NC) says he has received three letters and a phone call asking him not to vote for Obama. “I was surprised, but I’m not worried about it,” he says. “As I said to the lady on the phone, I figured that the Bush administration had ample opportunity to investigate Senator Obama, and if they had discovered he was not truly a citizen they… would have let us know.” Immigration law expert Peter Spiro of Temple University says the entire issue is a “nonstarter, because Obama was born in Hawaii.” The biggest effort of the attempt to stop the Electoral College from certifying Obama’s presidency is a lawsuit in California brought by failed presidential candidate Alan Keyes (see November 12, 2008 and After). Lawyer Philip Berg, who has lost a lawsuit challenging Obama’s citizenship (see August 21-24, 2008), says: “People are going after electors now because they can only vote for a qualified candidate, and [Obama] hasn’t shown he’s qualified. I think we have enough trouble—we don’t need a fake president.” Melanie Siewert of Kenansville, North Carolina, says the questions surrounding Obama’s citizenship have moved her to get involved in politics for the first time in her life. “I’m not asking electors to overturn their vote, but really to, before we vote, to make absolutely sure,” she says. She says she has contacted most of North Carolina’s 15 electors. “This is not being a sore loser or racist. This is just about ensuring that our leader is being truthful about who he is.” Presidential historian Perry Leavell says: “Human beings will always go for myth because it’s compelling, dramatic, and, if it were true, it would be able to change history. You can go back into the history of the American presidency and find over and over again people… who are prepared to believe the exact opposite of what all the data would say.” Constitutional law binds state electors to cast their votes for the candidate who won their state. [Christian Science Monitor, 11/26/2008] The Electoral College will vote for Obama as president. [WRAL-TV, 12/15/2008]

A portion of the advertisement that runs in the Chicago Tribune. [Source: We the People (.org)]Robert L. Schulz, a wealthy anti-tax activist from upstate New York and the chairman of the We the People Foundation, takes out the second of two ads in the Chicago Tribune questioning whether President Barack Obama is a “natural born citizen” and thusly eligible to be president. Schulz confirms that his non-profit foundation spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on the ads. The ads echo long-debunked claims that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) is fraudulent (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, and November 10, 2008). Cases challenging Obama’s citizenship have been thrown out of numerous state courts (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and the State of Hawaii has vouched for the authenticity of the Obama birth certificate, which by state law is locked in a state government vault with all other such “long form birth certificates” issued by Hawaiian officials (see July 1, 2009). Schulz’s ad raises the following claims: The birth form released by Obama was “an unsigned, forged, and thoroughly discredited” live birth form, Schulz says. Digital and real copies of Obama’s birth certificate have been examined by experts, including members of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and pronounced real (see August 21, 2008). According to Schulz, “Hawaiian officials will not confirm” that Obama was born in their state. Hawaiian officials initially did resist releasing a copy of the certificate, citing state privacy laws. However, Hawaii’s health director and head of vital statistics reviewed Obama’s birth certificate in the department’s vault and vouched for its authenticity (see October 30, 2008). Schulz says that legal affidavits state Obama was born in Kenya. Those affidavits were filed by challengers to Obama’s citizenship, and those challenges have been dismissed by a variety of courts (see August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008). Obama’s paternal grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended Obama’s birth in Kenya, Schulz says. Schulz is referring to claims by street preacher Ron McRae who interviewed the second wife of Obama’s grandfather, Sarah Obama, via long-distance telephone (see October 16, 2008 and After). The audiotape clearly shows that the assembled Obama relatives, and the translator who spoke to McRae, repeatedly stated that Obama was born in Hawaii. Schulz says that “US law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama’s birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.” Schulz is incorrect. US law states that any child born in the US is a legitimate citizen regardless of his parents’ nationalities and/or citizenships. Obama’s father had dual Kenyan/British citizenship, and his mother was a US citizen. Had Obama been born outside of US territory and his mother Ann Dunham been under 19 years of age, which she was, Obama would indeed not have been a citizen at the time of his birth, though the provisions of this law were subsequently loosened and made retroactive for government employees serving abroad and their families. The point is moot, because Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu. Schulz says that in 1965, Obama’s mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or US citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen. Schulz has produced no evidence to back this claim; Dunham did not file any of the documentation required to renounce one’s US citizenship, and even so, would not have jeopardized Obama’s citizenship in doing so. Obama and his mother moved to Indonesia in 1968, and returned to Hawaii while Obama was still in grade school. Schulz provides a reproduced Indonesian school document that states Obama’s citizenship at the time as “Indonesian,” but the same document lists Obama’s birthplace as “Honolulu, Hawaii.” [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008]Schulz claims his challenges to Obama are not motivated by political partisanship. “We never get involved in politics,” he says of We The People. “We avoid it like the plague.” However, Schulz has done battle with local and state authorities for years; in 2007, a federal judge ordered him to shutter his Web site because he and his organization were, in the words of the Justice Department’s tax division, using the site to promote “a nationwide tax-fraud scheme.” Schulz now says he is being targeted by government operatives who are attempting to silence him. He says his group attempted to buy a similar ad in USA Today, but could not afford the cost. [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008; Salon, 12/5/2008]

Milwaukee radio host Mark Belling responds to a caller who says that “gun manufacturers” would be able to raise prices during the economic crisis, by saying: “Well, okay. You’re right about that. Everybody’s buying guns before Obama comes in and outlaws them all.” [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

Salon columnist Alex Koppelman explores the widening sets of claims that purport to prove President Barack Obama is not a US citizen—the heart of the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory. The Obama campaign long ago produced a valid birth certificate that allowed Obama to run legitimately as a presidential candidate (see June 13, 2008), Obama’s mother Ann Dunham has also affirmed her son’s citizenship, and Hawaiian officials have confirmed that Obama was indeed born in a hospital in Honolulu (see October 30, 2008). However, some on the right continue to promulgate the tale of Obama’s supposed Kenyan citizenship, or Indonesian citizenship, or British citizenship. The Chigago Tribune recently ran a paid advertisement questioning Obama’s citizenship (see December 3, 2008). Conservative news and opinion blogs such as WorldNetDaily run stories on a near-daily basis challenging Obama’s citizenship, or producing hoax “birth certificates” that “prove” Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya, or other locales (see July 20, 2008). Plaintiffs have filed lawsuits challenging Obama’s citizenship in a number of state courts, all of which have been rejected (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and a similar case goes up for review in the Supreme Court (that case also challenges Republican presidential contender John McCain’s citizenship, as McCain was born in the former Panama Canal Zone to parents serving in the US military, another legitimate way of securing citizenship—see March 14 - July 24, 2008 and August 21-24, 2008). Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, notes that some people will never let go of the idea that Obama is not a citizen, no matter what level of proof is provided. “There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” he says. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it.… Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.” Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant, he says. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates, agrees. People who believe in a conspiracy theory “develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence,” Berlet says. “As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy.” Social psychologist Evan Harrington adds: “One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special. The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they’ll have convenient ways to discredit [it].” Koppelman notes that during the presidential election, so-called “birthers” said that they would drop their claims if only Obama would release the “long form” of his birth certificate, even though to do so would be to violate Hawaii’s privacy laws, which keep all such documents under lock and key. During the campaign, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, released a statement saying she had verified that the state has the original birth certificate on record (see October 30, 2008), and that Obama’s Hawaiian birth is a matter of state record. Experts with the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, part of the FactCheck (.org) organization, have examined the certificate and verified its authenticity (see August 21, 2008), as has PolitiFact (see June 27, 2008). Koppelmann notes that the conspiracy theory has grown to the point where talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have suggested that Obama used the occasion of his grandmother’s death to go to Hawaii to alter the record (see November 10, 2008). Koppelman notes that many who align themselves with the “birther” movement are well-known conspiratorists. Author Jerome Corsi, who attacked Obama’s citizenship in a pre-election book (see August 1, 2008 and After), has spoken of “secret government plans” to form a “North American Union” with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, asserts that the 9/11 attacks were staged by the US government (so-called “trutherism”). Another critic, Andy Martin, who seems to be the source of the rumor that Obama is a Muslim and is a strong “birther” proponent, was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law (see October 17-22, 2008). Robert Schulz, who ran the Tribune ads, is a well-known tax protester and anti-government rhetorician. [Salon, 12/5/2008]

Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly and former Bush administration political director Karl Rove tell listeners that media journalists are “overstating” the current economic problems in order to help the incoming Obama administration. O’Reilly asks Rove, “All right, so you are agreeing with me then that there is a conscious effort on the part of the New York Times and other liberal media to basically paint as drastic a picture as possible, so that when Barack Obama takes office that anything is better than what we have now?” Rove’s response: “Yes.” O’Reilly says that the “plot” is to “blame everything on Bush for quite a long period of time.” Rove calls the economic reporting little more than “scare tactics.” O’Reilly concludes: “All I want is an honest press. I’m not hoping one way or the other.” Amanda Terkel of the Center for American Progress observes: “For years, in fact, the Bush administration has tried Rove and O’Reilly’s strategy of insisting that nothing is wrong. Although the United States has been in a recession since December 2007, the Bush administration has continued to insist that the economy was strong. The result? A government unprepared to deal with ‘the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.’” [Think Progress (.org), 12/9/2008]

The conservative “astroturf” advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see Late 2004, October 2008, and August 6, 2009) launches a multi-pronged attack on every major policy initiative attempted by the Obama administration. Within weeks of Obama’s inauguration, AFP holds “Porkulus” rallies protesting Obama’s stimulus spending measures. The Koch-funded Mercatus Center (see August 30, 2010), working in concert with AFP, releases a report that falsely claims stimulus funds are being disproportionately directed towards Democratic districts; the author is later forced to correct the report, but not before conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, citing the report, calls the stimulus program “a slush fund,” and Fox News and other conservative outlets repeat the characterization. AFP vice president Phil Kerpen is a Fox News contributor; AFP officer Walter Williams is a frequent guest host for Limbaugh. AFP soon creates an offshoot organization, Patients United Now (PUN—see May 29, 2009), designed to oppose the Obama administration’s health care reform initiatives; PUN holds some 300 rallies against reform efforts (see August 5, 2009), some of which depict Democratic lawmakers hung in effigy (see July 27, 2009) and others depict corpses from Nazi concentration camps. AFP also holds over 80 rallies opposing cap-and-trade legislation, which would force industries to pay for creating air pollution. AFP also targets individual Obama administration members, such as “green jobs” czar Van Jones, and opposes the administration’s attempt to hold international climate talks. AFP leader Tim Phillips (see August 6, 2009) tells one anti-environmental rally: “We’re a grassroots organization.… I think it’s unfortunate when wealthy children of wealthy families… want to send unemployment rates in the United States up to 20 percent.” [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]

Glenn Beck, the former CNN Headline News talk show host who has just signed with Fox News, has a discussion with Fox chief executive Roger Ailes about his intentions as Fox’s newest host. Beck later recalls: “I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him: ‘You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up’.” Far from warning Beck to tone down his rhetoric, Ailes tells Beck that Fox’s primary mission is now to serve as the opposition to the newly elected President Obama (see November 4, 2008). According to Beck, Ailes tells him: “I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.” One of Beck’s primary themes on Headline News has been his fear that the US is becoming a socialist nation, a theme he says Ailes encourages him to develop on Fox. Fox vice president Bill Shine will say: “I think we’ve been doing a very good job of trying to point out some things that maybe some other news organizations haven’t pointed out. We’re kind of looking for things that people aren’t being told.” Major Garrett, Fox’s White House correspondent, will say: “[T]here very may well be a curiosity about the Fox brand interacting with the Obama brand. There may be an expectation of a higher degree of skepticism” (see October 13, 2009). One of Beck’s first additions to his Fox studio is a caricature of Obama drawn to resemble former Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. [Los Angeles Times, 3/6/2009]

Amy Kremer, a former flight attendant who will go on to found the Atlanta Tea Party and become the chair of the Tea Party Express, writes of her extreme disgust with the certification of Barack Obama as president (see January 20-21, 2009). Kremer has previously expressed her conviction that Obama is not an American citizen (see October 2008). She writes: “I have lost all hope on this issue of OBami’s eligibility to be president of the United States. I am totally disillusioned after sitting and watching Congress certify the Electoral College vote on CSPAN without one objection.” [Politico, 2010; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has already launched attacks on President-elect Barack Obama, including attempting to blame him for the global recession even though he has not yet taken office (see November 5-12, 2008). Today he tells his listeners that he hopes Obama’s administration is a failure. (Limbaugh’s words are publicly reported by the liberal organization ThinkProgress; his remarks are carried on his Web site, but are accessible only to those who pay for access.) Limbaugh says, “I disagree fervently with the people on our [Republican] side of the aisle who have caved and who say, ‘Well, I hope he succeeds.’” Limbaugh says “a major American print publication” has asked him to write a brief statement on his “hope for the Obama presidency.” Limbaugh’s response: “So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” When Limbaugh is interrupted by someone in the studio laughing, he continues: “What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. [Limbaugh often refers to the mainstream media as the ‘drive-by media.’] I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: ‘Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.’ Somebody’s gotta say it.” [Think Progress, 1/20/2009]

Pastor Steven Anderson. [Source: Jill Stanek]Pastor Steven Anderson of the Tempe Independent Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, delivers an impassioned sermon in which he calls for God to strike down President Obama—to “melt” Obama “like a snail.” When Anderson gives a similar sermon at another church in August 2009 and posts it on YouTube, it will cause an outcry among Obama supporters and media observers. Anderson’s sermon is based on the Bible’s Psalm 58, which details the divine curse laid upon the foes of King David. During it, he quotes Psalm 58, which reads in part: “Break their teeth, Oh God, in their mouths. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, Oh Lord, let them melt away as waters which run continually. When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.” [Arizona Republic, 8/29/2009; Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]Calling for Obama's 'Abortion' - Anderson then says: “‘As a snail which melteth,’ Barack Obama, since you want to use your salt solution to kill babies in this country [referring to abortion], Barack Obama, you’re going to reap what you sow because one day, Barack Obama, you’re going to be burning in hell and you’re going to feel a burning sensation all over your skin—which was the same sensation felt by every baby that was aborted in his mother’s womb.… He’s saying, let Barack Obama perish like an abortion. Let Barack Obama perish like a miscarriage.—‘As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.’ Let me tell you something—somebody needs to abort Barack Obama. It’s true.” Denies Calling for Assassination - Anderson continues: “Now, I’m not to do it. I’m not saying vigilanteism. I’m not saying that somebody should go kill. I’m saying there should be a government in this country that, you know, under God’s authority, that takes Barack Obama and aborts him. On television. For everybody to see in the whole world. Did you hear me? Now, I’m not saying I’m going to do it. I’m not a vigilante. But I’m going to tell you something—if there was any justice in this country, if the judicial branch of this country meant anything they would take Barack Obama and all of his colleagues and take them and they would abort him. They would melt him like a snail. That’s what they—they’d break the teeth out of his head, my friends.… And you say, ‘oh, I can’t believe you’re threatening the president,’ I’m not saying I’m going to do it, I just wish God would do it. And he will do it, my friends. And I wish we had a government that would act on God’s behalf. Like the government is supposed to do. You know, the government is supposed to carry out God’s law—enforce God’s laws against murder, against stealing, against lying, against deceit, against adultery. That’s the purpose of human government. And so I’d like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail. I’d like to see the teeth knocked right out of his head. I’d like to see him perish just like an abortion. That’s what David preached. That’s what he prayed to God.” Obama Turning America Communist - Anderson continues: “Now look—we could sit there and say you know… and we’re only talking about one thing that we don’t like about Barack Obama. I could name for you a hundred things that he’s wrong on. I could name for you a hundred.… We’re just talking about one aspect of it—the abortion that he’s fighting for, the murder that he’s fighting for. What about the fact that he’s turning it into a communist nation? That he wants to redistribute the wealth, like Levi Mordachai—also known as Karl Marx? And his Communist Manifesto—[Marx] wanted to redistribute the wealth.” Attacking America's Poor - Anderson continues: “You know, you think I want taken the wealth that I go out and work by the sweat of my face and the sweat of my brow and give it to some lazy jerk in the ghetto, somewhere, who’s never gone to work in their life? I don’t care whether you like that or not, it’s wicked. God said to the man that works, ‘if a man will not work neither shall he eat.’ That’s what the Bible preaches. Why should I go out and work so that some fat slob in the ghetto can get fat off of my food stamps that I’m paying for and EBT—you know, [to audience], what, is it—EBT? You know, ‘I want Domino’s Pizza’—we’ve got a big sign, ‘We Accept EBT.’ You know what I mean? And they probably deliver it on EBT. They don’t even have to leave the house, my friend, they’ll get the pizza delivered to them. And, you pay for it. It’s wicked, it’s stealing. [EBT is a method of delivering federal food stamp monies.] You say, ‘It’s not a moral issue.’—Uh… last time I checked, stealing’s a moral issue. Take money out of my pocket and give it to somebody else—isn’t that in the Ten Commandments? Oh, you know, you just care about these financial issues, gotta care about the moral issues… financial issues are moral issues, my friend. Somebody takes money out of my bank account—it’s immoral. Okay? It’s wrong.” Obama Is 'Pro-Queer' - Anderson asks the audience for their input. “So many other things that we don’t like about Barack Obama. Does anybody… let’s have a little open forum here. Is there a man—and, only men speak in this church—is there a man here that can tell me something else that’s wicked about Barack Obama tonight? Do you have some other policy that you think is wicked?” A member of the congregation says, “Pro queer.” Anderson says: “Gay rights. Thank you, sir. All right, this is great. Gay rights—interactive preaching with pastor Anderson—gay rights, right? Promoting the Sodomites. Pushing not only that but a sodomite agenda in schools. Schools teaching sodomite curriculum. Teaching alternative lifestyles. See, your five-year-olds, your six-year-olds, you seven-year-olds… [you] say they don’t start that young. Well you know what? You only have to drive two hours, my friend. Get in your car and drive two hours and you’ll be in California. And it’s by law being taught in elementary school in the earliest grades. Only drive two hours to get there!” Claims No Racism in Attacks, Says Obama Is 'White' - After more attacks on welfare recipients, Anderson turns to the issue of race. “You know… and, this has nothing to do with race,” he says. “I’m so sick and tired of people calling me a racist for being against Barack Obama. You know, I thought we were past that in this country. You know what I mean? Let it go! I love all people equally—red, yellow, black, and white—they’re Christians inside—I’ve won more black people to the Lord, probably, than I’ve won white people to the Lord my friend. … I have very close friends, right now, that are black. One of my best friends is black. But… [l]et’s get over it. They’re perpetuating the hatred between races by bringing it up all the time. Oh wow—you know, the first black president! No he’s not—he’s white. He’s just as white as he is black. He’s half black, half white. But, yet, he’s just black black black. Why not say he’s white? I mean, if he’s half black and half white, I’m going to say he’s white. That’s the half I want to chase! You know? I’m calling him a white man. We have a white president coming in, my friend. He’s white! Don’t tell me he’s black, he’s white. His mom is white. Her mom is white! Her dad is white. His parents are white. He’s a white man! Barack Obama is white… deal with it!” [Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]Secret Service Inquiry - In August, the Secret Service will interview Anderson to ascertain if he constitutes a threat to the president (see August 29, 2009).

Screen capture of an MSNBC broadcast in which the disputed recidivism claim was made. [Source: Media Matters]Many media figures repeat a disputed claim by the Pentagon that 61 former Guantanamo detainees are again engaged in terrorist activities (see January 13-14, 2009), without noting that the figure is being challenged. The argument is being used to criticize President Obama’s announced plans to close the Guantanamo detention facility within a year (see January 22, 2009). Liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters documents a number of media outlets promulgating the claim. On Fox News, host Sean Hannity tells a guest, “But we know… 61 Gitmo detainees that have already been released, according to the Pentagon, went right back to the battlefield with their fanaticism.” On CNN, neoconservative guest Clifford May tells host Campbell Brown: “Many hundreds have been released. About 60 of them—a little more than that—have returned to the battlefield.” Brown fails to challenge the claim. Nor does MSNBC’s Chris Matthews challenge a similar assertion from Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO), who says, “we know already that more than 60 of the people who have been released have been killing our troops, our Americans and civilians on the battlefield.” [Media Matters, 1/23/2009] The Boston Globe reports, “Pentagon statistics show that of the hundreds of detainees that have been released from Guantanamo since it opened in early 2002, at least 61 have returned to terrorist activities.” [Boston Globe, 1/22/2009] The Los Angeles Times reports, “The Pentagon has said that 61 former detainees have taken up arms against the US or its allies after being released from the military prison in Cuba.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/23/2009] The San Francisco Chronicle reports, “Republicans also claimed that 61 detainees already released have been ‘found back on the battlefield.’” [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/23/2009] And an ABC News article repeats House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) statement, “Do we release them back into the battlefield, like some 61 detainees that have been released we know are back on the battlefield?” ABC does not report that the claim is disputed. [ABC News, 1/22/2009]

Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly says that he finds it “insulting” that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is concerned with civilian casualties from US military strikes in his country. Karzai has criticized the US for a recent air strike that he says killed 16 Afghani civilians (see January 26, 2009). O’Reilly tells his listeners: “US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are risking their lives to protect the Afghan people from the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But President Karzai does not seem to get that. Once again, he has condemned American forces after a raid killed some civilians. In that raid, a top Taliban commander and some of his cronies were also killed, but apparently, Karzai doesn’t understand that in war, collateral damage is constantly present. US military is investigating the situation, but Check [a segment on O’Reilly’s show] believes Karzai is making a political grandstand play, and it is insulting. Without us, his head is on a stick.” [Think Progress (.org), 1/27/2009]

Media critic and columnist George Neumayr writes that the Democrats’ economic stimulus plan will include enforced abortions and euthanasia for less productive citizens. Neumayr calls this claim a once “astonishingly chilly and incomprehensible stretch [that] is now blandly stated liberal policy,” basing it on the Democrats’ plan to provide money to the states for “family planning.” Neumayr equates the funding, which would go for such initiatives as teaching teenagers about the use of condoms and measures to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, to the famous Jonathan Swift essay of 1729, “A Modest Proposal,” which satirically suggested that impoverished Irish families might sell their children to rich Englishmen for food. “Change a few of the words and it could be a Democratic Party policy paper,” Neumayr writes. “Swift suggested that 18th-century Ireland stimulate its economy by turning children into food for the wealthy. [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] proposes stimulating the US economy by eliminating them. Other slumping countries, such as Russia and France, pay parents to have children; it looks like Obama’s America will pay parents to contracept or kill them. Perhaps the Freedom of Choice Act can also fall under the Pelosi ‘stimulus’ rationale. Why not? An America of shovels and scalpels will barrel into the future. Euthanasia is another shovel-ready job for Pelosi to assign to the states. Reducing health care costs under Obama’s plan, after all, counts as economic stimulus too. Controlling life, controlling death, controlling costs. It’s all stimulus in the Brave New World utopia to come.” Like a Washington Times editorial from months earlier (see November 23, 2008), Neumayr uses the term “final solution” for the Democrats’ economic proposal, the term for the Nazis’ World War II-era extermination of millions of Jews and other “undesirables.” He writes: “‘Unwanted’ children are immediately seen as an unspeakable burden. Pregnancy is a punishment, and fertility is little more than a disease. Pelosi’s gaffe illustrates the extent to which eugenics and economics merge in the liberal utilitarian mind.” “Malthus lives,” he says, referring to the 19th century scholar Thomas Robert Malthus, whose theories of ruthless natural selection predated Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Neumayr goes on to accuse “Hillary Clinton’s State Department” of preparing to set up programs of “people-elimination,” predicated on what he calls “UN-style population control ideology” and “third-world abortions.” [American Spectator, 1/27/2009]

Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA) apologizes for criticizing conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Gingrey was initially critical of Limbaugh and Hannity for not challenging President Obama on his proposed economic stimulus package strongly enough. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes [former House Speaker] Newt Gingrich [R-GA] to stand back and throw bricks,” Gingrey said. “You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.” Today Gingrey issues a lengthy apology for his words after receiving complaints from conservatives in his district and elsewhere. “I am one of you,” he tells supporters. “I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent. I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.… As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values. I have actively opposed every bailout, every rebate check, every so called ‘stimulus.’ And on so many of these things, I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh.” Gingrey says that Limbaugh, Hannity, and Gingrich are “the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience.” Gingrey spokesman Chris Jackson says of the hosts, “Those guys are some our biggest supporters, and we need them.” Gingrey also makes a guest appearance on Limbaugh’s show where he berates himself for making his earlier criticisms, saying: “Rush, thank you so much. I thank you for the opportunity, of course this is not exactly the way to I wanted to come on.… Mainly, I want to express to you and all your listeners my very sincere regret for those comments I made yesterday to Politico.… I clearly ended up putting my foot in my mouth on some of those comments.… I regret those stupid comments.” [Think Progress, 1/28/2009; Phil Gingrey, 1/28/2009; CNN, 1/29/2009]

Four far-right “nativists” speak against immigration at a presentation that takes place at Washington’s National Press Club, in an event sponsored by a group called American Cause. The four include Marcus Epstein, the head of American Cause; Bay Buchanan, the sister of MSNBC contributor and American Cause founder Pat Buchanan, and the head of an anti-immigrant political action committee, Team America PAC; Fox News contributor James Pinkerton; and Peter Brimelow, an outspoken white supremacist who founded the racist VDare.com. Epstein is a young activist with ties to racist and white supremacist groups (see October 8, 2007). The presentation is, according to a press release, about “how immigration control is vital to future Republican success.” The release states, “Despite media reports to the contrary, every defeated GOP Congressional candidate supported amnesty or open border policies for illegal aliens—or had Democratic contenders who took tough stands on illegal immigration, according to a new study to be released at a symposium next Thursday.” The study is an American Cause production written by Epstein entitled “Immigration and the 2008 Republican Defeat,” and is, the release says, “a detailed analysis of every single Republican seat lost in the 2008 House race, that shows in virtually every race the Republican supported amnesty or the Democrat supported tough border security.” The release accuses Republicans of “pandering” to Hispanics to secure their votes, without success; argues that Hispanics care little about immigration issues; claims that “[w]hatever gains, if any, pandering to Hispanics gives is greatly outweighed by loss of the White vote, which is more important”; says recent “[d]emographic changes made by mass immigration have been disastrous to Republicans and fatal if not halted”; and says that when Republicans take strong stands for increased border security, “national sovereignty, and immigration control,” they win elections. [The American Cause, 1/30/2009; New York Times, 1/31/2009] The New York Times will call the claims about immigration stances affecting Republican success at the polls “nonsense,” and will state, “In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, ‘anti-amnesty’ hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions” (see January 31, 2009). [New York Times, 1/31/2009] A blog hosted by the pro-immigration American Immigration Council (AIC) will claim that the turnout for the presentation is “scant,” and will observe that the poor turnout “is a hopeful sign that this type of intolerant, out-of-touch rhetoric is no longer mainstream and that the real leaders of the GOP have learned a hard lesson—that alienating and demonizing the largest growing segment of the American electorate is not a winning campaign strategy—and are looking for a new way forward.” [Wendy Sefsaf, 1/30/2009]

The New York Times, in an editorial, condemns the “nativist” anti-immigrant movement (see February 2009) as having what it calls “a streak of racialist extremism” and being far on the fringe of the American body politic. The editorial comes days after a presentation by the anti-immigration group American Cause at the National Press Club (see January 29, 2009). American Cause was founded by MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan and is headed by Marcus Epstein, a young activist with a raft of ties to racist and white supremacist groups (see October 8, 2007). Epstein also releases a report to go with the presentation that claims the federal government has been far too soft on would-be immigrants, and blames the November 2008 defeats of Republican candidates on the party’s unwillingness to stand up for an absolute ban on immigration. Epstein accuses former President Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove of “pander[ing] to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” and urges Republicans to work to completely seal the US borders and drive immigrants out. The Times observes: “This is nonsense, of course. For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, ‘anti-amnesty’ hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions.… Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance. Unless you can find a way to get rid of all the Latinos.” Participants in Epstein’s presentation included Bay Buchanan, Pat Buchanan’s sister and the director of an anti-immigrant political action committee, Team America PAC; James Pinkerton, a Fox News contributor; and Peter Brimelow, an outspoken white supremacist who founded the racist VDare.com. The Times warns: “It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.” [New York Times, 1/31/2009]

Logo of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). [Source: FAIR / Attack Machine (.com)]The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identifies three powerful organizations at the center of the American “nativist” movement, which helps drive the anti-immigration sentiment in the country. The three are the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. FAIR is the nation’s pre-eminent anti-immigration lobbying group. CIS is an “independent” think tank. NumbersUSA calls itself a grassroots organizing group. The SPLC calls the three groups “fruits of the same poisonous tree.” All three are the product of what the SPLC calls “a network of restrictionist organizations.” The person who “conceived and created” this network is a Michigan eye doctor named John Tanton. Tanton is one of the most powerful and influential anti-immigration activists in the nation, and for decades has been deeply involved in white supremacist and openly racist organizations. He is affiliated with the founders of a eugenicist foundation called “a neo-Nazi organization” in media reports. He has written about the need for white dominance in America, calling for “a European-American majority” to control all aspects of American society, and has made numerous anti-Semitic assertions. FAIR is listed as a hate group by the SPLC, in part because of its acceptance of $1.2 million in donations from the Pioneer Fund, which the SPLC calls “a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence, and genetics.” FAIR boasts self-proclaimed white supremacists as its board members, some of whom write for racist publications. CIS was conceived by Tanton and is an offshoot of FAIR. CIS has produced false and misleading data that it has attempted, with some success, to feed into the mainstream media that purports to show that minorities are damaging to the nation. One example cited by the SPLC is an item from CIS reprinted by the National Review, which falsely claimed it had data proving that a bank, Washington Mutual, collapsed after working to bring Hispanic employees on board. NumbersUSA is the outgrowth of another organization, US Inc., a Tanton foundation designed to funnel money to white supremacist groups. The head of NumbersUSA was a prominent employee of US Inc. The SPLC concludes: “Together, FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA form the core of the nativist lobby in America. In 2007, they were key players in derailing bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that had been expected by many observers to pass. Today, these organizations are frequently treated as if they were legitimate, mainstream commentators on immigration. But the truth is that they were all conceived and birthed by a man who sees America under threat by non-white immigrants. And they have never strayed far from their roots.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2/2009]

FedUpUSA, a group of investors in Troy, Michigan, issues a call for people to send tea bags to Congress as a sign of their disapproval of Democratic economic policies. The group calls the event a “Commemorative Tea Party.” This will become one of the earliest events in the history of the “tea party” movement. [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010] Nineteen days later, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli will launch what he calls an unplanned, “impromptu” rant against the Obama administration’s economic policies, in which he will call for a “tea party” protest (see February 19, 2009).

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore, appearing as a guest on Fox News host Glenn Beck’s show, compares Social Security to “a big Ponzi scheme.” Moore and Beck are discussing the issue of the US debt, and Moore compares the cycle of different government agencies buying and selling portions of the debt to one another to Social Security, saying: “It’s very much like the way Social Security works. It’s a big Ponzi scheme. It’s like a big vault of IOUs.” [Media Matters, 2/2/2009; Media Matters, 9/7/2010] Beck will later call Social Security a “Stalinist” program designed to forcibly redistribute wealth to poorer citizens (see January 27, 2010).

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says that because of the Obama administration’s new policies, there is what he calls a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years. “If it hadn’t been for what we did—with respect to the terrorist surveillance program (see After September 11, 2001 and December 15, 2005), or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees (see September 16, 2001 and November 14, 2001, among others), the Patriot Act (see October 26, 2001), and so forth—then we would have been attacked again,” says Cheney. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the US.” The situation has changed, he says. “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist (see January 22, 2009) than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” he says. Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he continues. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” He calls the Guantanamo detention camp, which President Obama has ordered shut down (see January 22, 2009), a “first-class program” and a “necessary facility” that is operated legally and provides inmates better living conditions than they would get in jails in their home countries. But the Obama administration is worried more about its “campaign rhetoric” than it is protecting the nation: “The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.” Cheney says “the ultimate threat to the country” is “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter—a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is deployed in the middle of an American city. “That’s the one that would involve the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and the one you have to spend a hell of a lot of time guarding against. I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt. Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.” [Politico, 2/4/2009] Cheney has warned of similarly dire consequences to potential Democratic political victories before, before the 2004 presidential elections (see September 7, 2004) and again before the 2006 midterm elections (see October 31, 2006).

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann slams former Vice President Dick Cheney for Cheney’s recent warnings concerning the policies of President Obama (see February 4, 2009). Olbermann calls Cheney’s remarks a “destructive and uninformed diatribe… that can only serve to undermine the nation’s new president, undermine the nation’s effort to thwart terrorism, and undermine the nation itself.” Cheney said that the Obama administration seems “more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans.” Olbermann responds by asking: “What delusion of grandeur makes you think you have the right to say anything like that? Because a president, or an ordinary American, demands that we act as Americans and not as bullies; demands that we play by our rules; that we preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; you believe we have chosen the one and not the other? We can be Americans, or we can be what you call ‘safe’—but not both?” Olbermann says that the Bush-Cheney policies—the so-called “Bush System,” as recently dubbed by former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo (see January 29, 2009)—“[s]tart[ed] the wrong war, detain[ed] the wrong people, employ[ed] the wrong methods, pursue[d] the wrong leads, utilize[d] the wrong emotions.” He continues: “We, sir, will most completely assure our security not by maintaining the endless, demoralizing, draining, life-denying blind fear and blind hatred which you so thoroughly embody. We will most easily purchase our safety by repudiating the ‘Bush System.’ We will reserve the violence for which you are so eager, sir, for any battlefield to which we truly must take, and not for unconscionable wars which people like you goad and scare and lie us into. You, Mr. Cheney, you terrified more Americans than did any terrorist in the last seven years, and now it is time for you to desist, or to be made to desist. With damnable words like these, sir, you help no American, you protect no American, you serve no American—you only aid and abet those who would destroy this nation from within or without.” [MSNBC, 2/5/2009]

Betsy McCaughey (R-NY), the former lieutenant governor of New York and a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, writes that health care provisions in the Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan will affect “every individual in the United States.” McCaughey writes: “Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors. But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions.” McCaughey says the provisions are similar to suggestions in the book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, by former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), until recently Obama’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services. McCaughey writes that hospitals and doctors who do not use the system will be punished, by a federal oversight board to be called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Perhaps most worrisome is McCaughey’s claim that elderly Americans will be given reduced health care based on their age and expected productivity. “Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost-effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council,” she writes. “The Federal Council is modeled after a UK board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis. In 2006, a UK health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.… If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the US will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later. The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined.” [Bloomberg News, 2/9/2009] McCaughey’s claims are very similar to the ones she made against the Clinton administration’s attempt to reform health care in 1994 (see Mid-January - February 4, 1994). They will be proven false (see July 23, 2009).

Fox News graphic making disproven claims about Congressional health care reform proposals. [Source: Media Matters]The Wall Street Journal, Fox News anchors, conservative Web news purveyor Matt Drudge, and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh promulgate a discredited claim by health care lobbyist Betsy McCaughey that the economic recovery bill pending in Congress includes a provision that would have the government “essentially dictate treatments” for sick Americans. McCaughey wrote a commentary for Bloomberg News on February 9 that makes the claim (see February 9, 2009); Drudge and Limbaugh echo and add to the claim the same day. The next day, the Wall Street Journal’s senior economic writer, Stephen Moore, appearing on Fox News’s flagship morning news broadcast America’s Newsroom, joins news anchors Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly in promoting the same claim (see October 13, 2009), with Moore saying that the provision would “hav[e] the government essentially dictate treatments.” Moore credits Limbaugh with informing him of the claim, saying: “I just learned of this myself yesterday. In fact, Rush Limbaugh made a big deal out of it on his radio show and it just—it caused all sorts of calls into congressional offices.” On February 10, Limbaugh takes credit for spreading the claim, telling listeners: “Betsy McCaughey writing at Bloomberg, I found it. I detailed it for you, and now it’s all over mainstream media. Well, it’s—it headlined Drudge for a while last night and today. Fox News is talking about it.” McCaughey is wrong in the claim: according to an analysis of the legislative language by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, “the language in the House bill that McCaughey referenced does not establish authority to ‘monitor treatments’ or restrict what ‘your doctor is doing’ with regard to patient care but, rather, addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients ‘to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.’” Moore says: “[T]his news story really has exploded on the public scene in just the last 24 hours, Bill. We’ve been just inundated with complaints from people about the implications of having the government essentially dictate treatments.” Moore later goes on to add that the bill “especially will affect elderly people, because one of the ways, if we move more towards a nationalized health care system, as this bill would move us one step towards that, what you have to do to restrain costs—what many other countries do, like Canada and Britain, is they essentially, Bill, ration care. And they tell patients you are eligible for this kind of care, but this is too expensive. And so what this bill would essentially do is set up a kind of pricing mechanism to tell people, yes, we can afford to treat you for this, but not that.” Moore encourages viewers to “express their outrage over this” before Congress takes the issue up. Kelly adds another false claim: that the bill discourages doctors to act on their own judgment and promotes medical decisions “in the spirit of uniform health care.” Kelly notes, “That sounds dangerously like socialized medicine.” Hemmer also makes the false claim that the legislation contains “rules [that] appear to set the stage for health care rationing for seniors, new limits on medical research, and new rules guiding decisions your doctor can make about your health care.” Hemmer calls the provision a “midnight health care insertion” into the Senate spending bill. [Media Matters, 2/10/2009]

Conservative columnist Thomas P. Kilgannon, the president of Freedom Alliance, writes in a piece for the online news magazine Human Events: “Globalists were dismayed because [President] Bush’s rejection of the ICC [International Criminal Court] was a vote for American sovereignty—a refusal to cede authority to international government and a court that is not bound to the principles of the US Constitution, far less our laws. That could change under the Obama administration. Two weeks ago, hope returned to the House of Hammarskjold [referring to the United Nations] when US Ambassador Susan Rice, in a closed [UN] Security Council meeting, voiced support for the ICC.” [Human Events, 2/10/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009]

Seattle math teacher and Young Republican member Keli Carender, writing for her blog “Redistributing Knowledge” under the moniker “Liberty Belle,” posts: “Anyone in the Seattle area? I would like to stage a Porkulus Protest here. I know that ‘the most frightening bill on Earth’ has now passed both Houses, but they are going to have to reconcile the two bills, which will take at least a few days, I’m hoping!” (Carender is referring to the recent passage of the federal economic stimulus package.) “If you are at all close to this area, leave a comment that you would be interested in attending. I’m going to go look up the requirements to have a protest around our dear Senators’ offices downtown. Unlike the melodramatic lefties, I do not want to get arrested. I do however want to take a page from their playbook and be loud, obnoxious, and in their faces. If I don’t do something, I might just lie around totally depressed. Who’s with me??” Carender gets a single comment in return, from an anonymous poster promising to mention her idea on his Internet radio show and advising her to “[k]eep up the fight against Marxism and Faux-Bama!” Shortly thereafter, she posts exuberantly, “The protest against the porkulus is on for President’s Day!” She gives the date as February 16, 2009 in Westlake Park, and advises: “The idea is to use what we’ve learned about dissent over the last eight years. We need loud protests with lots noise and visuals. So, what should you bring? Bring AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN! Bring your families, your friends, neighbors, bring everyone! Bring SIGNS!! Get those craft making juices flowing and make signs and banners and pictures and paintings. Just imagine that you are a left-wing college student with nothing else to do and that should help you get started! Bring something to sit on and appropriate clothing. Most importantly, JUST BRING IT!!!” Carender receives no comments until February 11, when a trickle of positive responses begin appearing. [Keli Carender, 2/10/2009; Keli Carender, 2/10/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009] The term “porkulus” has been popularized by talk show host Rush Limbaugh, in reference to the economic stimulus package, which Limbaugh says is loaded with “pork” for Democratic Congress members. [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010] Carender’s rally is later considered one of the seminal events in the nascent “tea party” movement (see February 16-17, 2009).

Fox News on-air graphic repeating a typo from the original Senate Republican Communications Center press release. [Source: Media Matters]Fox News anchor Jon Scott, co-anchor of the “straight news” program Happening Now, uses research provided in a Senate Republican Communications Center (SRCC) press release to make dubious claims about how the Obama economic recovery plan “grew, and grew, and grew” over time. While Scott reports the claims, Fox displays seven graphics illustrating them. The graphics’ textual content hews so closely to the SRCC’s press release that it even repeats a typographical error found in the original memo. Scott and the on-air graphics cite the SRCC’s original sources for their information, which include Politico, the Congressional Quarterly, the Denver Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, but neither Scott nor the graphics acknowledge the SRCC as the source of the research. The typo is in the seventh and last graphic, incorrectly citing the date of a Wall Street Journal article as “12/19/09.” The next day, Scott apologizes, but only for the typo, prompting Washington Post media critic and CNN host Howard Kurtz to say: “We sometimes jab at the pundits for using talking points, but in the case of Fox News anchor Jon Scott, it was literally true this week.… You should be apologizing for using partisan propaganda from the GOP without telling your viewers where it came from. Talk about missing the point” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 2/10/2009; Media Matters, 2/15/2009]

A newly released government threat analysis shows that slain trust-fund millionaire James G. Cummings, an American Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was killed by his wife Amber in December 2008, possessed the radioactive components necessary to build a so-called “dirty bomb.” Cummings, infuriated by the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, purchased depleted uranium over the Internet from an American company. FBI Confiscates Radioactive Materials - The Bangor Daily News reports, “According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’s home after his shooting death on December 9.” According to the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center: “Amber [Cummings] indicated James was very upset with Barack Obama being elected president. She indicated James had been in contact with ‘white supremacist group(s).’ Amber also indicated James mixed chemicals in the kitchen sink at their residence and had mentioned ‘dirty bombs.’” An FBI search of the Cummings home found four jars of depleted uranium-238 labeled “uranium metal” and the name of an unidentified US corporation, another jar labeled “thorium” and containing that material, and a second, unlabeled jar which also contained thorium-232. Other materials found in Cummings’s home were consistent with the manufacture of an explosive device, which if detonated could have spread radioactive debris throughout a relatively large local area. The FBI also found information on how to build “dirty bombs,” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60, and other radioactive materials. FBI evidence shows Cummings had numerous ties to a variety of right-wing white supremacist groups. Cummings also owned a collection of Nazi memorabilia which, according to local tradesmen, he proudly displayed throughout his home. Police reports show that Cummings has a long history of violence. Amber Cummings contends she is innocent of her husband’s murder by reason of insanity, and claims she suffered years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse at his hands. The Department of Homeland Security has refused to comment on the incident. [Bangor Daily News, 2/10/2009; Raw Story, 3/9/2009] Local law enforcement officials downplay the threat Cummings posed, and the national media virtually ignores the story. [Time, 9/30/2010]Later Information Shows Depth of Threat Posed by Cummings - Additional information gleaned by Time reporter Barton Gellman from Cummings’s notes and records later shows that the threat posed by Cummings was even more serious than initially reported. Cummings had applied to join the National Socialist Party (the American Nazi organization), and had detailed plans on how to assassinate President-elect Obama. Gellman will call Cummings “a viciously angry and resourceful man who had procured most of the supplies for a crude radiological dispersal device and made some progress in sketching a workable design.” Gellman says that in his attempt to construct a nuclear weapon, Cummings “was far ahead of Jose Padilla, the accused al-Qaeda dirty-bomb plotter (see June 10, 2002), and more advanced in his efforts than any previously known domestic threat involving a dirty bomb.” The materials were later confirmed to be the radioactive materials they were labeled as being; Amber Cummings will say that her husband bought them under the pretense of conducting legal research for a university. Although the materials Cummings had would not, themselves, succeed in unleashing large amounts of radiation over a large area, he was actively searching for three ingredients that would serve such a purpose: cobalt-60, cesium-137, and strontium-90. He had succeeded in manufacturing large amounts of TATP, an explosive favored by Islamist suicide bombers and brought on board an aircraft by “shoe bomber” Richard Reid (see December 22, 2001). “His intentions were to construct a dirty bomb and take it to Washington to kill President Obama,” Amber Cummings says. “He was planning to hide it in the undercarriage of our motor home.” She says her husband had practiced crossing checkpoints with dangerous materials aboard, taking her and their daughter along for an image of innocence. Maine state police detective Michael McFadden, who participated in the investigation throughout, says he came to believe that James Cummings posed “a legitimate threat” of a major terrorist attack. “When you’re cooking thorium and uranium under your kitchen sink, when you have a couple million dollars sitting in the bank and you’re hell-bent on doing something, I think at that point you become someone we want to sit up and pay attention to,” he says. “If she didn’t do what she did, maybe we would know Mr. Cummings a lot better than we do right now.” [Time, 9/30/2010]

Sean Hannity, a Fox News host who also hosts a daily radio show, has conservative columnist Ann Coulter as a guest on his radio show. Coulter and Hannity warn listeners that President Obama wants to “tak[e] our guns and schools and doctors.” Coulter says: “[B]y the way, the NRA [National Rifle Association] also has information on how they [the Obama administration] are going to be expanding the concept of national parks to include, you know, highways running from Rhode Island to Virginia. National parks have gun bans imposed throughout.” Of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the enormous Obama-backed economic recovery plan that includes large government-financed bailouts of several large corporations, Coulter says: “This bill is so much worse than earmarks and pork. This is a total government takeover, and Big Brother coming in and taking our guns and schools and doctors.” Hannity agrees with Coulter’s claims. [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]

The Washington Times spins off a recent op-ed by health industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey (see February 9, 2009) to claim that the Obama administration will attempt to save money by euthanizing old people, disabled people, and sickly infants. The editorial begins with the “chilling” idea of a national medical information database that will allow the government to “track… your every visit to a health care provider—where you went, who you saw, what was diagnosed, and what care was provided.” The Obama administration, the Times claims, will use that information to decide which people deserve the more expensive lifesaving treatments and which ones must be denied in the interest of cost efficiency. “If it costs too much to treat you, and you are nearing the end of your life anyway, you may have to do with less, or with nothing,” the Times writes. “You just aren’t worth the cost.… What nondescript GS-11 will be cutting care from Aunt Sophie after her sudden relapse before he or she heads to the food court for some stir fry?” The elderly, the physically and mentally disabled, all “whose health costs are great and whose ability to work productively in the future” will, the Times writes, be allowed to die or even exterminated. So will premature babies, badly wounded soldiers, and others as yet to be determined. The Times again cites Nazi Germany’s “T4 Aktion” program of forcibly euthanizing less productive citizens (see November 23, 2008) as a likely template for the Obama program. [Washington Times, 2/11/2009]

Keli Carender, a Seattle blogger and Young Republicans member who is organizing a rally to protest the Obama economic stimulus package (see February 10, 2009), is interviewed on a local Fox News radio show hosted by Kirby Wilbur, a board member of the Young America’s Foundation. The YAF is one of the organizations that produces the Conservative Political Action Conference. Carender does not mention the interview on her blog, but some of those who comment on her posts mention the Wilbur interview. [Keli Carender, 2/10/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009] Carender’s rally is later considered one of the seminal events in the nascent “tea party” movement (see February 16-17, 2009).

Unsuccessful House candidate Steve Beren (R-WA), now working for an Internet marketing firm, begins promoting a rally organized by Seattle blogger Keli Carender (see February 10, 2009). According to Beren, he became aware of Carender’s rally by hearing interviews with her on radio shows hosted by Kirby Wilbur (see (February 11, 2009)) and David Boze. An hour after Beren’s announcement, Carender announces that she will again be interviewed by Boze, and says Beren will speak at her rally. [Keli Carender, 2/12/2009; Steve Beren, 2/16/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009] Carender’s rally is later considered one of the seminal events in the nascent “tea party” movement (see February 16-17, 2009).

Nationally prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin promotes an anti-economic stimulus rally in Seattle being organized by an area math teacher, Keli Carender (see February 10, 2009 and February 12, 2009), writing: “There should be one of these in every town in America. What are you doing?” Malkin also posts a response from Carender expressing her gratitude at the mention, and adding: “I wanted to give the Coloradans some advice for gathering folks there, and believe me, you have the time. I got the permit for the park here on Tuesday, and now look, by Sunday, it is ALL OVER THE PLACE. I emailed everyone I knew. I emailed friend’s parents who I knew were Conservative, I emailed my parents’ friends, bloggers, etc. I called everyone I could think of, policy think tanks, ‘movers and shakers’ in the Seattle Republican Party, Conservative organizations, college professors, etc. (From this I have forged a relationship with the chairwoman of the National Black Republican Association who is going to write a statement for me to read, as she cannot get to Seattle on Monday.) I called local Conservative talk radio stations and they have been running it all week. I lived and breathed this thing for four days, which did cause me to miss a couple of things here and there, but it is totally worth it. Basically everyone, you just have to do it. Call up your police station or parks department and ask how you can obtain a permit, and then just start advertising. The word will spread. I am only one person, but with a little hard work this protest has become the efforts of A LOT of people. To the people who think this won’t help I say this: this protest will not stop the bill. I have no illusions that it could. I’m hoping for a few things though. One, that the Conservatives and Libertarians and Republicans in Seattle can finally meet each other and see they are not alone. There are actually quite a lot of us here, but we are very quiet, and that MUST STOP. We need to show that we exist. Second, we need to show support for the Republicans and Democrats that voted against the porkulus. If they think, for one second, that they made a bad choice, we have no chance to fight. Third, it sends a message to [President] Obama and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-CA] that we are awake and we know what’s happening, and we are not going to take it lying down. It is a message saying, expect more opposition because we’re out here. That’s it! I hope everyone across the country can get something going too!!!” [Michelle Malkin, 2/15/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009] Carender’s rally is later considered one of the seminal events in the nascent “tea party” movement (see February 16-17, 2009). Liberal blogger Jane Hamsher will note, “First [tea party] rally organized on a three week-old blog with help from folks from Fox News Radio, the Young Republicans, the Young America’s Foundation (CPAC—see (February 11, 2009)), and a GOP House candidate who works for an Internet marketing firm.” [Huffington Post, 4/15/2009]

Keli Carender at the Seattle ‘porkulus’ rally. Blogger Michelle Malkin promoted the rally and provided food for the protesters. [Source: Taxing Tennessee (.com)]Covering the anti-economic stimulus “porkulus” rally in Seattle (see February 16-17, 2009), conservative blogger Michelle Malkin uses the term “tea party” in conjunction with the protests, perhaps for the first time. In a blog post largely made up of photos from the Seattle rally, Malkin titles the post “From the Boston Tea Party to your neighborhood pork protest.” Malkin credits Seattle blogger and organizer Keli Carender with single-handedly organizing the rally, though liberal blogger Jane Hamsher will later note that Carender had assistance from Malkin, members of Fox News Radio, a representative of the Young America’s Foundation, and a Republican politician who works for an Internet marketing firm (see February 15, 2009). The conservative blog Instapundit cites protests to follow in Denver, Nashville, and New York City. [Michelle Malkin, 2/16/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009]

Some of the protesters at the ‘Porkulus’ rally in Seattle. [Source: American Typo / Michelle Malkin]A rally in Seattle called “Porkulus,” a term popularized by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, draws about 100 participants. The rally is to protest the Obama administration’s economic policies. It is organized by area math teacher Keli Carender, who blogs under the moniker “Liberty Belle.” During the rally, Carender shouts, “We don’t want this country to go down the path to socialism!” eliciting “Hear, hear!” responses. She calls the government’s economic stimulus package (which Limbaugh has dubbed “porkulus”) “the reason we’re in this mess.” She also plays an audiotape of a speech by former President Ronald Reagan. Rally participant Connie White tells a reporter that Congressional Democrats are “ramming things through for their liberal agenda. I’m one of the poor. I used to be middle class. But I don’t want the government helping me.” Carender will become one of the area’s more prominent “tea party” organizers, and after she is brought to Washington, DC, for training by the lobbying group FreedomWorks, becomes part of the nationwide Tea Party Patriots organization. The next day, the day President Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, another “Porkulus” rally occurs in Denver, hours after Obama visits another site in the city to promote the bill. The Denver “Porkulus” rally is sponsored by Americans for Prosperity and the Independence Institute. The next day, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli performs his five-minute “impromptu” rant against the legislation, and calls for “tea party” protests to oppose it (see February 19, 2009). [Publicola, 2/17/2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010]

Protesters in front of the Colorado State Capitol wave anti-Obama, pro-Ayn Rand signs and large ‘checks’ from the federal government representing ‘pork’ spending. [Source: People's Press Collective / Michelle Malkin]Hundreds of protesters gather on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol to protest President Obama’s signing of the economic stimulus legislative package (see February 16, 2009). The rally is organized by, among others, the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity (see Late 2004, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009 and After, and April 2009 and After), the Independence Institute, and blogger Michelle Malkin. Former House Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) is one of the speakers, along with a number of state and local Republican politicians. Malkin writes after the rally: “[H]opefully, [the rally] will spur others to move from the phones and computers to the streets. Community organizing helped propel Barack Obama to the White House. It could work for fiscal conservatism, too.” Liberal blogger Jane Hamsher later notes that the Independence Institute is funded by the Coors Foundation’s Castle Rock Foundation, which operates as something of a “mini Heritage Foundation in Colorado.” Beer billionaire and conservative financier Jeffrey Coors sits on the board of the Institute. Hamsher later writes, “According to Michelle Malkin, second rally organized by Koch/Americans for Prosperity, Coors/Independence Institute, former GOP congressman and Independence Institute fellow Tom Tancredo.” [Michelle Malkin, 2/17/2009; Huffington Post, 4/15/2009]

Conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas uses a recent editorial by health care industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey (see February 9, 2009) to accuse the Obama administration of planning a “euthanasia” program to exterminate hapless Americans. President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, Thomas writes, “means the government will decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t. It is survival of the fittest in practice.” Thomas then writes that the Obama administration’s support of legal abortions will inevitably lead to “euthanasia” of older and less productive citizens. He quotes a 1979 book by theologian Francis Schaeffer and future Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? as saying, “Will a society which has assumed the right to kill infants in the womb—because they are unwanted, imperfect, or merely inconvenient—have difficulty in assuming the right to kill other human beings, especially older adults who are judged unwanted, deemed imperfect physically or mentally, or considered a possible social nuisance?” Thomas then writes, “No one should be surprised at the coming embrace of euthanasia.” Schaeffer and Koop’s prediction that “the next candidates for arbitrary reclassification as nonpersons are the elderly” now “seems to be coming true,” Thomas writes. He also repeats a claim from the 92-year-old Koop that in 1988, he had suffered from an ailment that temporarily paralyzed him. Under Britain’s government-run health care, Koop claims, “I would have been nine years too old to have the surgery that saved my life and gave me another 21 years.” Soon, Thomas writes, “dying will become a patriotic duty when the patient’s balance sheet shows a deficit.” [Tribune Media Services, 2/18/2009]

A rally against the Obama economic stimulus plan takes place in Mesa, Arizona, another in a spate of “porkulus” protests (see February 16-17, 2009 and February 17, 2009). The rally is organized by a talk-radio station, KFYI, owned and operated by Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio ownership cartel. Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) is a featured speaker and co-host. KFYI shock jock Bruce Jacobs, Hayworth’s fellow host, adds a flavor of racism to the event, pointing to Hispanic demonstrators and saying, “Look at how illiterate some of these illegals are.” [Huffington Post, 4/15/2009]

CNBC commentator Rick Santelli ‘rants’ about the Obama economic policies. [Source: CNBC / Media Matters]In what is purportedly an impromptu on-air “rant,” CNBC financial commentator Rick Santelli exhorts viewers to join in what he calls a “Chicago tea party” to oppose the Obama administration’s plans to bail out several large financial institutions. Santelli’s rant comes during CNBC’s Squawk Box broadcast. [CNBC, 2/19/2009; CNBC, 2/19/2009] Santelli’s “impromptu rant” is actually preceded by a number of “tea party” protests and activities, and some of the protests’ organizers claim to have given Santelli the idea for his on-air “tea party” statement (see After November 7, 2008, February 1, 2009, and February 16-17, 2009). 'It's Time for Another Tea Party' - Broadcasting from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli tells viewers in part: “The government is promoting bad behavior. We certainly don’t want to put stimulus pork and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check and think that they ought to save it.… I have an idea. The new administration is big on computers and technology. How about this, Mr. President and new administration. Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages? Or would they like to at least buy buy cars, buy a house that is in foreclosure… give it to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water? This is America! How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand! President Obama, are you listening?… It’s time for another tea party. What we are doing in this country will make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.” Santelli also compares the US to Cuba: “Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy,” he says. “They moved from the individual to the collective. Now they’re driving ‘54 Chevys.” [RightPundits, 2/19/2009] Santelli’s “tea party” metaphor is in reference to the Boston Tea Party, a Revolutionary War protest against taxation by America’s British rulers. [New York Daily News, 2/20/2009]Financial Traders Are the 'Real Americans' - Santelli tells viewers that the “real” Americans are not the working-class citizens trying to pay mortgages larger than they can handle, but the stock traders and other members of the Chicago Mercantile, New York Stock Exchange, and other members of the financial industry. [Business Insider, 2/19/2009] Santelli says, “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July (see After November 7, 2008), all you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010]Cheers and Applause - Behind Santelli, traders erupt in cheers and applause at his comments. [College News, 2/20/2009]Active Promotion of the Video - Within hours, CNBC begins promoting the video of Santelli’s comments, calling it “the rant of the year” and posting it on YouTube and its own website. [CNBC, 2/20/2009]Protests, Organizations Begin Forming - Within minutes of Santelli’s broadcast, “tea party” organizations and groups begin forming (see February 19, 2009 and After). More Studied Response - Three days later, Santelli will explain the thinking behind his comments, saying: “America is a great country and we will overcome our current economic setbacks. The issues that currently face us and the solutions to correct them need to be debated, vetted, and openly studied. This should not be an issue about the political left or right. This is an issue of discourse on a topic that affects the foundation and principles that make our country great… free speech, contract law, freedom of the press, and most of all the legacy we leave our children and grandchildren.” [CNBC, 2/22/2009]Human Rights Organization: 'Racial' Component to Santelli's Rhetoric - In 2010, a report by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) will say that “[a]n unstated racial element colored Santelli’s outrage over the Obama administration’s home mortgage rescue plan.” The report will explain that many of the “losers” responsible for the “bad loans” Santelli is criticizing were made by banks that “disproportionately targeted communities of color for subprime loans.” Santelli’s “losers” are largely African-American or Hispanic borrowers who had “been oversold by lenders cashing in on the subprime market. Their situations were worsened by derivatives traders, like Santelli, who packaged and re-packaged those loans until they were unrecognizable and untenable.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010]

Mockup of a ‘Palin-Santelli 2012’ campaign poster. [Source: National Review]National Review columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez says that the reaction to CNBC commentator Rick Santelli’s “tea party rant” (see February 19, 2009) has been so strong that she is speculating about the possibility of a presidential ticket for 2012 featuring former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Santelli: “Palin-Santelli 2012.” She writes: “I’m noticing the tone. I’m seeing the enthusiasm. And I’m digging out from the sheer volume of e-mails I’ve been getting today about that CNBC dude. The reaction to Rick Santelli’s Chicago-trading-floor incident this morning echoes the emotional reaction my inbox had to Sarah Palin’s convention speech this summer. I make no endorsements. It’s just an observation.” She calls Santelli a “sign of life” for a flagging conservative opposition movement. [National Review, 2/19/2009]

The media responds strongly to CNBC commentator Rick Santelli’s call for a “tea party” to oppose the Obama economic stimulus. [CNBC, 2/20/2009]Santelli 'Equally Complicit' in Economic Crisis - Writing for College News, Jon Graef notes that Santelli has opposed virtually all of the Obama economic policies, including all the bailouts of the mortgage and automobile industries. He lauds Santelli for “embracing the democratic possibilities that the Internet allows,” but says that “Santelli and his ilk are equally complicit in the housing/finance crises as those who refused to live responsibly within their means. If Santelli doesn’t like the details of the mortgage bailout, then why is continuing to work in conjunction with an industry that received its own government bailout—and promptly spent it on press releases and product placement?” [College News, 2/20/2009]'Mad as Hell' - Writer Jerome Corsi, who penned a lurid and highly inaccurate “biography” of President Obama before the 2008 election (see August 1, 2008 and After), notes that some are comparing Santelli’s rant to that of fictional news anchor Howard Beale in the movie Network, where Beale screams, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” [WorldNetDaily, 2/19/2009]'Investors Have It All Figured Out' - Market analyst Donald Luskin writes that Santelli “went a little bit berserk in his broadcast… warning that all the bailouts, programs, rescues, stabilizations, and stimuli are turning our capitalist nation into Cuba. He got the floor traders so stirred up it seemed for a minute there that an armed revolution was going to start at any moment.” Luskin continues, with at least some sarcasm: “Santelli is right. This country is being rescued to death. The voters may be fooled, for a while at least. But obviously investors have it all figured out.” [Smart Money, 2/20/2009]'Santelli Hates Poor People' - The avant-garde Washington political gossip blog Wonkette calls Santelli “unlikable” for calling Americans forced to default on their mortgage “losers,” and calls his on-air rant “apesh_t.” Commentator Jim Newell continues, “Maybe Obama’s plan isn’t so great, who knows, but one thing is clear, and that’s that Rick Santelli hates poor people—and by poor people we mean the bottom 50-90 percent of per capita income earners.” [Jim Newell, 2/20/2009]'Speaking Truth to Ego and the Far Left' - Financial blogger Thomas Smicklas writes that Santelli “sp[oke] truth to ego and the far left.… It is becoming more apparent each day of the new administration those who work hard, save, and are responsible citizens are getting hosed by the practice of class warfare.… Ladies and gentlemen, the politics of vote buying, legal extortion, and the re-distribution of wealth to the lazy and ill-educated has begun in earnest. And we haven’t even touched upon a deteriorating foreign policy. Thanks to CNBC’s Rick Santelli and the workers in the pit that deal in commodities who finally expressed it. We can all be grateful for the lesson.” [Thomas Smicklas, 2/20/2009]Rewarding Those Who Caused the Bad Lending - The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins writes that right-wing media figures such as Matt Drudge are “freaking out” over Santelli’s rant, “fomentin’ a revolution on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He’s assembled a small army of half-hearted, floor-trading broheims to cheer and hoot as he rails against President Obama’s plan to not immediately foreclose on everybody and kick them out into the streets, because that rewards ‘bad behavior,’ and clearly what we should be doing is rewarding people who incentivized all the risky lending, because until the house of cards collapsed, things were looking pretty for everybody!” [Huffington Post, 3/22/2009]'Hysteria a la Fox News' - Columnist Mary McNamara calls Santelli’s rant “colorful,” but says Santelli’s “rhetoric/hysteria a la Fox News is damaging to national discourse.” The financial crisis has hit hardest, not in the businesses and mansions of the people Santelli works with, but in the working-poor and lower-middle class families. “They work hard,” she writes. “They weren’t buying luxury homes. Sure, there were a few speculators. But mostly, they just wanted a little piece of the American dream, especially good schools for their kids and closer proximity to their work.” [MultiChannel (.com), 2/19/2009]'Money for Idiots' - Conservative columnist David Brooks refers to Santelli’s “lustily” delivered rant in defending the necessity for the government to stabilize an economy sliding into chaos. [New York Times, 2/19/2009]'Pretty Awesome' - New York Magazine’s Jessica Pressler writes that she finds Santelli’s “call for revolution… pretty awesome.” She writes, “Santelli is pissed off about the Obama administration’s bailout measures so far, in particular the housing plan the administration announced yesterday, and he wants America to stand up and revolt before we turn into some kind of not-even-tropical version of Cuba.” [New York Magazine, 2/19/2009]Favorable Coverage from Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge - Associated Content’s Mark Whittington notes that Santelli’s rant is garnering tremendous coverage from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Drudge. “More importantly,” he writes, “Santelli’s attack on the Obama mortgage bailout scheme seems to reflect a growing disquiet over President Obama’s spending schemes, which started with the stimulus package, and will now not only include a bailout for mortgages but also a new bailout for the car companies and perhaps even a second stimulus.” [Associated Content, 2/19/2009]'Almost Inciting a Riot' - Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal observes: “CNBC’s RIck Santelli is always pugnacious, but he outdid himself today, almost inciting a riot among the traders in Chicago when talking about Obama’s housing plan. Suffice to say, the capitalists on the floor do not want to pay for anyone else’s mortgage. Neither do we. That being said, his insistence that these guys represent the ‘real America’ won’t ultimately play that well among most people.” [Business Insider, 2/19/2009] Progressive columnist and blogger John Amato calls himself “disgusted” at Santelli’s “embarrassing diatribe at the expense of the American people,” and writes that watching Santelli “made me realize that these Wall Street frat boys still don’t get it. America is sick and tired of the riches they have manipulated out of the system and then be lectured by people who make more money than 100 middle class workers put together.” Referring to Santelli’s experience as a trader in the high-risk derivative market, an area that many have blamed for causing much of the economic downturn, Amato writes sarcastically, “The next time I want advice on how to live I’ll be sure to ask a man who was deeply involved in ‘derivatives.’” He concludes: “Don’t blame the crooked mortgage lenders who were having bidding wars to acquire their next mansion, but blame first time buyers or average Americans, the lifeblood of our society and call them ‘losers.’ Santelli needs to own that he is the loser and if it wasn’t for the gasbag insider crowd that gives his words a modicum of respect, crowds would gather outside his home with torches and pitchforks.” [John Amato, 2/21/2009]'Voice of the Silent Majority' - Progressive author and blogger Jane Hamsher writes: “Rick Santelli is just the explosive id of CNBC, saying what everyone else thinks. Somehow it’s not the pervasive institutional rot, the criminal malfeasance at the highest levels, or the chairman of the Federal Reserve telling Americans over and over again that housing prices would never go down. They have convinced themselves that the real problem is once again people at the absolute bottom of the economic scale. If they’d only used appropriate ‘judgment’ and lived within their means, we’d all be fine. Santelli is now being promoted by CNBC as a truth teller, a voice of the… ‘silent majority.’ ‘Would you join Santelli’s “Chicago Tea Party?”’ they want to know. With 170,000 respondents, 93 percent say yes! I guess it was only a matter of time before a hero emerged.” [Jane Hamsher, 2/20/2009; CNBC, 2/20/2009]

CNBC stock analyst Rick Santelli’s “impromptu” on-air “rant” against President Obama’s economic stimulus program, in which Santelli calls for a “tea party” protest and tells viewers he intends to begin organizing a “Chicago Tea Party,” galvanizes nascent “tea party” groups around the nation. Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson has already registered the Internet domain “chicagoteaparty.com” (see August 2008), and hours after Santelli’s rant Christenson puts up a “homemade” tea party Web site. A Chicago Libertarian activist, Eric Odom (see After November 7, 2008), puts up a similar site at “officialchicagoteaparty.com.” The next day, the short-lived “Nationwide Tea Party Coalition” forms. At the same time, a new Facebook group, “Rick Santelli is right, we need a Taxpayer (Chicago) Tea Party,” is created by Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity, and is administered by Odom. The Facebook page leads back to a site called “taxpayerteaparty.com,” run by Americans for Prosperity. Simultaneously, Brendan Steinhauser, the campaign director of FreedomWorks (see March 2, 2009) and another administrator of the Facebook group, begins organizing “tea party” groups—or actually continues his efforts, since on February 9, 10 days before Santelli’s broadcast, he had contacted a Florida activist who had attended a FreedomWorks training session and asked her to organize a protest in Fort Myers. Steinhauser later writes that the day after Santelli’s broadcast: “I just wrote this little 10 quick easy steps to hold your own tea party, wrote it up, and kinda was proud of it and sent it to Michelle Malkin. She linked to it from her blog.” Malkin’s blog is overwhelmed by the response. FreedomWorks staffers call activists around the country asking them to organize “grassroots” tea party organizations, and on March 9, FreedomWorks announces a nationwide “Tea Party Tour,” saying in a statement, “From [Santelli’s] desperate rallying cry FreedomWorks has tapped into the outrage building from within our own membership as well as allied conservative grassroots forces to organize a 25-city Tea Party Tour where taxpayers angry that their hard-earned money is being usurped by the government for irresponsible bailouts, can show President Obama and Congressional Democrats that their push towards outright socialism will not stand.” By February 27, the first official “tea party” events take place, organized by the Sam Adams Alliance, FreedomWorks, and Americans for Prosperity. Many of the original organizations will eventually be subsumed by, or merge with, national structures, again primarily organized and funded by FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and other right-wing lobbying organizations. Eventually, six nationwide networks will form (see August 24, 2010). [Huffington Post, 4/15/2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 8/24/2010] During this period, conservative media outlets such as the Weekly Standard will claim that the tea party movement was entirely spontaneous in its origins (see March 2, 2009). However, facts stand in the way of that claim (see February 15, 2009, February 16, 2009, February 17, 2009, February 18, 2009, March 13, 2009 and After, April 2009 and After, April 6-13, 2009, April 8, 2009, April 14, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 16, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 24, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6-7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 28, 2009, July 3-4, 2010, August 30, 2010, and September 20, 2010).

Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck has a special segment called “War Games” during the week’s broadcasts. In today’s show, he is joined by former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer (see February 1996) and retired Army Sergeant Major, Tim Strong. The three discuss what they say is the upcoming “civil war” in America, which, they assert, will be led by “citizen militias” made up of principled, ideologically correct conservatives. Beck says that he “believes we’re on this road.” The three decide among themselves that the US military would refuse to obey President Obama’s orders to subdue the insurrection and would instead join with “the people” in “defending the Constitution” against the government. [Salon, 2/22/2009] Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin’s blog “Hot Air” features an entry that calls Beck’s rhetoric “implausible” and “nutty.” [Hot Air, 2/22/2009]

A day after CNBC’s Rick Santelli engaged in a “rant” against President Obama’s economic policies, and called for a modern-day “tea party” to protest those policies (see February 19, 2009), White House press secretary Robert Gibbs invites Santelli to the White House for coffee and to discuss Obama’s plan to help homeowners. “I’d be happy to buy him a cup of coffee,” Gibbs says. “Decaf.” Gibbs has said that Santelli needs to learn more about the economic bailout before engaging in such sharp criticism. “I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so,” he says. “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school.… Mr. Santelli has argued, I think quite wrongly, that this plan won’t help everyone. This plan helps people who have been playing by the rules.… I would encourage him to read the president’s plan.… It’s tremendously important for people who rant on cable TV to be responsible and understand what it is they’re talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Santelli, who has admitted to not reading the White House’s bailout proposals, tells CNBC viewers he “would love to accept” the invitation, but—holding a tea bag to the cameras—says he prefers “tea” to coffee. [CNBC, 2/20/2009; Politico, 2/20/2009; Think Progress, 2/23/2009; New York Times, 2/23/2009; Associated Press, 3/2/2009] Shortly thereafter, Santelli will say that he felt “threatened” by Gibbs’s reference to not knowing where he lives (see February 23, 2009).

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